object:2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST
book class:Twilight of the Idols
class:chapter
author class:Friedrich Nietzsche
subject class:Philosophy
THE ANTICHRIST
An Attempted Criticism of Christianity
PREFACE
This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not one of them is yet alive;
unless he be of those who understand my Zarathustra. How _can_ I
confound myself with those who to-day already find a hearing?--Only the
day after to-morrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.
I am only too well aware of the conditions under which a man
understands me, and then _necessarily_ understands. He must be
intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to
endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on
mountain-tops,--and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and
national egotism _beneath_ him. He must have become indifferent; he
must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may
prove fatal.... Possessing from strength a predilection for questions
for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for the
_forbidden;_ his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience
of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most
remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have
remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband
his strength and his enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must
love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself....
Very well then! Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers,
my preordained readers: of what account are the rest?--the rest are
simply--humanity.--One must be superior to humanity in power, in
loftiness of soul,--in contempt.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
1
Let us look each other in the face. We are hyperboreans,--we know
well enough how far outside the crowd we stand. "Thou wilt find the
way to the Hyperboreans neither by land nor by water": Pindar already
knew this much about us. Beyond the north, the ice, and death--_our
life, our happiness...._ We discovered happiness; we know the way; we
found the way out of thousands of years of labyrinth. Who _else_ would
have found it?--Not the modern man, surely?--"I do not know where I
am or what I am to do; I am everything that knows not where it is or
what to do,"--sighs the modern man. We were made quite ill by _this_
modernity,--with its indolent peace, its cowardly compromise, and the
whole of the virtuous filth of its Yea and Nay. This tolerance and
_largeur de cur_ which "forgives" everything because it "understands"
everything, is a Sirocco for us. We prefer to live amid ice than to
be breathed upon by modern virtues and other southerly winds!... We
were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others: but we
were very far from knowing whither to direct our bravery. We were
becoming gloomy; people called us fatalists. _Our_ fate--it was the
abundance, the tension and the storing up of power. We thirsted for
thunderbolts and great deeds; we kept at the most respectful distance
from the joy of the weakling, from "resignation." ... Thunder was in
our air, that part of nature which we are, became overcast--_for we had
no direction._ The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight
line, a goal.
2
What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to
Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?--All that proceeds
from weakness. What is happiness?--The feeling that power is
_increasing,_--that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not
virtue, but efficiency[1] (virtue in the Renaissance sense, _virtu,_
free from all moralic acid). The weak and the botched shall perish:
first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to
perish.
What is more harmful than any vice?--Practical sympathy with all the
botched and the weak--Christianity.
3
The problem I set in this work is not what will replace mankind in the
order of living being! (--Man is an _end_--); but, what type of man
must be _reared,_ must be _willed,_ as having the higher value, as
being the most worthy of life and the surest guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough already: but as a
happy accident, as an exception, never as _willed._ He has rather been
precisely the most feared; hitherto he has been almost the terrible in
itself;--and from out the very fear he provoked there arose the will
to rear the type which has how been reared, _attained:_ the domestic
animal, the gregarious animal, the sick animal man,--the Christian.
4
Mankind does _not_ represent a development towards a better, stronger
or higher type, in the sense in which this is supposed to occur to-day.
"Progress" is merely a modern idea--that is to say, a false idea.[2]
The modern European is still far below the European of the Renaissance
in value. The process of evolution does not by any means imply
elevation, enhancement and increasing strength.
On the other hand isolated and individual cases are continually
succeeding in different places on earth, as the outcome of the most
different cultures, and in these a _higher type_ certainly manifests
itself: something which by the side of mankind in general, represents a
kind of superman. Such lucky strokes of great success have always been
possible and will perhaps always be possible. And even whole races,
tribes and nations may in certain circumstances represent such _lucky
strokes._
5
We must not deck out and adorn Christianity: it has waged a deadly
war upon this _higher_ type of man, it has set a ban upon all the
fundamental instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the
devil himself out of these instincts:--the strong man as the typical
pariah, the villain. Christianity has sided with everything weak, low,
and botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ towards all the
self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has corrupted even the
reason of the strongest intellects, by teaching that the highest values
of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations.
The most lamentable example of this was the corruption of Pascal, who
believed in the perversion of his reason through original sin, whereas
it had only been perverted by his Christianity.
6
A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen before my eyes. I tore
down the curtain which concealed mankind's _corruption._ This word in
my mouth is at least secure from the suspicion that it contains a moral
charge against mankind. It is--I would fain emphasise this again--free
from moralic acid: to such an extent is this so, that I am most
thoroughly conscious of the corruption in question precisely in those
quarters in which hitherto people have aspired with most determination
to "virtue" and to "godliness." As you have already surmised, I
understand corruption in the sense of _decadence._ What I maintain is
this, that all the values upon which mankind builds its highest hopes
and desires are _decadent_ values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its
instincts, when it selects and _prefers_ that which is detrimental to
it. A history of the "higher feelings," of "human ideals"--and it is
not impossible that I shall have to write it--would almost explain why
man is so corrupt. Life itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less
than the instinct of growth, of permanence, of accumulating forces,
of power: where the will to power is lacking, degeneration sets in.
My contention is that all the highest values of mankind _lack_ this
will,--that the values of decline and of _nihilism_ are exercising the
sovereign power under the cover of the holiest names.
7
Christianity is called the religion of _pity._--Pity is opposed to
the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life:
its action is depressing. A man loses power when he pities. By
means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already
introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. Through pity,
suffering itself becomes infectious; in certain circumstances it may
lead to a total loss of life and vital energy, which is absurdly
put of proportion to the magnitude of the cause (--the case of the
death of the Nazarene). This is the first standpoint; but there is a
still more important one. Supposing one measures pity according to
the value of the reactions it usually stimulates, its danger to life
appears in a much more telling light On the whole, pity thwarts the
law of development which is the law of selection. It preserves that
which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and
the condemned of life; thanks to the multitude of abortions of all
kinds which it maintains in life, it lends life itself a sombre and
questionable aspect. People have dared to call pity a virtue (--in
every _noble_ culture it is considered as a weakness--); people went
still further, they exalted it to _the_ virtue, the root and origin
of all virtues,--but, of course, what must never be forgotten is the
fact that this was done from the standpoint of a philosophy which
was nihilistic, and on whose shield the device _The Denial of Life_
was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this respect: by means of
pity, life is denied and made _more worthy of denial,_--pity is
the _praxis_ of Nihilism. I repeat, this depressing and infectious
instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and
enhancement of the value life: by _multiplying_ misery quite as much
as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in
promoting decadence,--pity exhorts people to nothing, to _nonentity!_
But they do not say "_nonentity_" they say "Beyond," or "God," or "the
true life"; or Nirvana, or Salvation, or Blessedness, instead. This
innocent rhetoric, which belongs to the realm of the religio-moral
idiosyncrasy, immediately appears to be _very much less innocent_ if
one realises what the tendency is which here tries to drape itself in
the mantle of sublime expressions--the tendency of hostility to life.
Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why he elevated pity to a
virtue.... Aristotle, as you know, recognised in pity a morbid and
dangerous state, of which it was wise to rid one's self from time to
time by a purgative: he regarded tragedy as a purgative. For the sake
of the instinct of life, it would certainly seem necessary to find some
means of lancing any such morbid and dangerous accumulation of pity, as
that which possessed Schopenhauer (and unfortunately the whole of our
literary and artistic decadence as well, from St Petersburg to Paris,
from Tolstoi to Wagner), if only to make it _burst...._ Nothing is
more unhealthy in the midst of our unhealthy modernity, than Christian
pity. To be doctors _here,_ to be inexorable _here,_ to wield the knife
effectively _here,--_ all this is our business, all this is _our_
kind of love to our fellows, this is what makes _us_ philosophers, us
hyperboreans!--
8
It is necessary to state whom we regard as our antithesis:--the
theologians, and all those who have the blood of theologians in their
veins--the whole of our philosophy.... A man must have had his very
nose upon this fatality, or better still he must have experienced it
in his own soul; he must almost have perished through it, in order
to be unable to treat this matter lightly (--the free-spiritedness
of our friends the naturalists and physiologists is, in my opinion,
a _joke,_--what they lack in these questions is passion, what they
lack is having suffered from these questions--). This poisoning
extends much further than people think: I unearthed the "arrogant"
instinct of the theologian, wherever nowadays people feel themselves
idealists,--wherever, thanks to superior antecedents, they claim the
right to rise above reality and to regard it with suspicion.... Like
the priest the idealist has every grandiloquent concept in his hand
(--and not only in his hand!), he wields them all with kindly contempt
against the "understanding," the "senses," "honours," "decent living,"
"science"; he regards such things as _beneath_ him, as detrimental and
seductive forces, upon the face of which, "the Spirit" moves in pure
absoluteness:--as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word _holiness,_
had not done incalculably more harm to life hitherto, than any sort of
horror and vice.... Pure spirit is pure falsehood.... As long as the
priest, the _professional_ denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is
considered as the _highest_ kind of man, there can be no answer to the
question, what _is_ truth? Truth has already been turned topsy-turvy,
when the conscious advocate of nonentity and of denial passes as the
representative of "truth."
9
It is upon this theological instinct that I wage war. I find traces
of it everywhere. Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins,
stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things.
The pathos which grows out of this state, is called _Faith:_ that is
to say, to shut one's eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer
at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of
all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow
their distorted vision with a good conscience,--they claim that no
_other_ point of view is any longer of value, once theirs has been
made sacrosanct with the names "God," "Salvation," "Eternity." I
unearthed the instinct of the theologian everywhere: it is the most
universal, and actually the most subterranean form of falsity on earth.
That which a theologian considers true, _must_ of necessity be false:
this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound
self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to
honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Whithersoever the
influence of the theologian extends, _valuations_ are topsy-turvy,
and the concepts "true" and "false" have necessarily changed places:
that which is most deleterious to life, is here called "true," that
which enhances it, elevates it, says Yea to it, justifies it and
renders it triumphant, is called "false." ... If it should happen that
theologians, _via_ the "conscience" either of princes or of the people,
stretch out their hand for power, let us not be in any doubt as to
what results therefrom each time, namely:--the will to the end, the
_nihilistic_ will to power....
10
Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say, that philosophy
is ruined by the blood of theologians. The Protestant minister is
the grand-father of German philosophy, Protestantism itself is the
latter's _peccatum originale._ Definition of Protestantism: the
partial paralysis of Christianity--and of reason.... One needs only to
pronounce the words "Tbingen Seminary," in order to understand what
German philosophy really is at bottom, theology _in disguise_.... The
Swabians are the best liars in Germany, they lie innocently.... Whence
came all the rejoicing with which the appearance of Kant was greeted
by the scholastic world of Germany, three-quarters of which consist of
clergymen's and schoolmasters' sons? Whence came the German conviction,
which finds an echo even now, that Kant inaugurated a change for the
_better?_ The theologian's instinct in the German scholar divined what
had once again been made possible.... A back-staircase leading into
the old ideal was discovered, the concept "true world," the concept
morality as the _essence_ of the world (--those two most vicious errors
that have ever existed!), were, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism,
once again, if not demonstrable, at least no longer _refutable...._
Reason, the _prerogative_ of reason, does not extend so far.... Out of
reality they had made "appearance"; and an absolutely false world--that
of being--had been declared to be reality. Kant's success is merely a
theologian's success. Like Luther, and like Leibniz, Kant was one brake
the more upon the already squeaky wheel of German uprightness.
11
One word more against Kant as a _moralist._ A virtue _must_ be _our_
invention, our most personal defence and need: in every other sense it
is merely a danger. That which does not constitute a condition of our
life, is merely harmful to it: to possess a virtue merely because one
happens to respect the concept "virtue," as Kant would have us do, is
pernicious. "Virtue," "Duty," "Goodness in itself," goodness stamped
with the character of impersonality and universal validity--these
things are mere mental hallucinations, in which decline the final
devitalisation of life and Knigsbergian Chinadom find expression. The
most fundamental laws of preservation and growth, demand precisely the
reverse, namely:--that each should discover _his_ own virtue, his own
Categorical Imperative. A nation goes to the dogs when it confounds
its concept of duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing is more
profoundly, more thoroughly pernicious, than every impersonal feeling
of duty, than every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction.--Fancy no
one's having thought Kant's Categorical Imperative _dangerous to life!_
... The instinct of the theologist alone took it under its wing!--An
action stimulated by the instinct of life, is proved to be a proper
action by the happiness that accompanies it: and that nihilist with the
bowels of a Christian dogmatist regarded happiness as an _objection
..._. What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work,
think, feel, as an automaton of "duty," without internal promptings,
without a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the
recipe _par excellence_ of decadence and even of idiocy.... Kant became
an idiot--And he was the contemporary of Goethe! This fatal spider was
regarded as _the_ German philosopher,--is still regarded as such!... I
refrain from saying what I think of the Germans.... Did Kant not see in
the French Revolution the transition of the State from the inorganic to
the _organic_ form? Did he not ask himself whether there was a single
event on record which could be explained otherwise than as a moral
faculty of mankind; so that by means of it, "mankind's tendency towards
good," might be _proved_ once and for all? Kant's reply: "that is the
Revolution." Instinct at fault in anything and everything, hostility to
nature as an instinct, German decadence made into philosophy_--that is
Kant!_
12
Except for a few sceptics, the respectable type in the history of
philosophy, the rest do not know the very first pre-requisite of
intellectual uprightness. They all behave like females, do these great
enthusiasts and animal prodigies,--they regard "beautiful feelings"
themselves as arguments, the "heaving breast" as the bellows of
divinity, and conviction as the _criterion_ of truth. In the end,
even Kant, with "Teutonic" innocence, tried to dress this lack of
intellectual conscience up in a scientific garb by means of the concept
"practical reason." He deliberately invented a kind of reason which
at times would allow one to dispense with reason, that is to say when
"morality," when the sublime comm and "thou shalt," makes itself heard.
When one remembers that in almost all nations the philosopher is only a
further development of the priestly type, this heirloom of priesthood,
this _fraud towards one's self,_ no longer surprises one. When a man
has a holy life-task, as for instance to improve, save, or deliver
mankind, when a man bears God in his breast, and is the mouthpiece of
imperatives from another world,--with such a mission he stands beyond
the pale of all merely reasonable valuations. He is even sanctified by
such a taste, and is already the type of a higher order! What does a
priest care about science! He stands too high for that!--And until now
the priest has _ruled!_--He it was who determined the concept "true
and false."
13
Do not let us undervalue the fact that we _ourselves,_ we free spirits,
are already a "transvaluation of all values," an incarnate declaration
of war against all the old concepts "true" and "untrue" and of a
triumph over them. The most valuable standpoints are always the last
to be found: but the most valuable standpoints are the methods. AH the
methods and the first principles of our modern scientific procedure,
had for years to encounter the profoundest contempt: association
with them meant exclusion from the society of decent people--one was
regarded as an "enemy of God," as a scoffer at truth and as "one
possessed." With one's scientific nature, one belonged to the Chandala.
We have had the whole feeling of mankind against us; hitherto their
notion of that which ought to be truth, of that which ought to serve
the purpose of truth: every "thou shalt," has been directed against
us.... Our objects, our practices, our calm, cautious distrustful
manner--everything about us seemed to them absolutely despicable and
beneath contempt After all, it might be asked with some justice,
whether the thing which kept mankind blindfold so long, were not an
sthetic taste: what they demanded of truth was a _picturesque_ effect,
and from the man of science what they expected was that he should make
a forcible appeal to their senses. It was our _modesty_ which ran
counter to their taste so long ... And oh! how well they guessed this,
did these divine turkey-cocks!--
14
We have altered our standpoint. In every respect we have become
more modest We no longer derive man from the "spirit," and from the
"godhead"; we have thrust him back among the beasts. We regard him as
the strongest animal, because he is the craftiest: one of the results
thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand we guard against the
vain pretension, which even here would fain assert itself: that man is
the great _arrire pense_ of organic evolution! He is by no means the
crown of creation, beside him, every other creature stands at the same
stage of perfection.... And even in asserting this we go a little too
far; for, relatively speaking, man is the most botched and diseased
of animals, and he has wandered furthest from his instincts. Be all
this as it may, he is certainly the most _interesting!_ As regards
animals, Descartes was the first, with really admirable daring, to
venture the thought that the beast was _machina,_ and the whole of
our physiology is endeavouring to prove this proposition. Moreover,
logically we do not set man apart, as Descartes did: the extent
to which man is understood to-day goes only so far as he has been
understood mechanistically. Formerly man was given "free will," as his
dowry from a higher sphere; nowadays we have robbed him even of will,
in view of the fact that no such faculty is any longer known. The only
purpose served by the old word "will," is to designate a result, a
sort of individual reaction which necessarily follows upon a host of
partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli:--the will no longer
"effects" or "moves" anything.... Formerly people thought that man's
consciousness, his "spirit," was a proof of his lofty origin, of his
divinity. With the idea of perfecting man, he was conjured to draw his
senses inside himself, after the manner of the tortoise, to cut off all
relations with terrestrial things, and to divest himself of his mortal
shell. Then the most important thing about him, the "pure spirit,"
would remain over. Even concerning these things we have improved our
standpoint Consciousness, "spirit," now seems to us rather a symptom of
relative imperfection in the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a
misapprehension, an affliction which absorbs an unnecessary quantity of
nervous energy. We deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as
it is done consciously. "Pure spirit" is a piece of "pure stupidity":
if we discount the nervous system, the senses and the "mortal shell,"
we have miscalculated--that it is all!...
15
In Christianity neither morality nor religion comes in touch at all
with reality. Nothing but imaginary _causes_ (God, the soul, the ego,
spirit, free will--or even non-free will); nothing but imaginary
_effects_ (sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness of sins).
Imaginary beings are supposed to have intercourse (God, spirits,
souls); imaginary Natural History (anthropocentric: total lack of
the notion "natural causes"); an imaginary _psychology_ (nothing
but misunderstandings of self, interpretations of pleasant or
unpleasant general feelings; for instance of the states of the _nervus
sympathicus,_ with the help of the sign language of a religio-moral
idiosyncrasy,--repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of
the devil, the presence of God); an imaginary teleology (the Kingdom
of God, the Last Judgment, Everlasting Life).--This purely fictitious
world distinguishes itself very unfavourably from the world of
dreams: the latter _reflects_ reality, whereas the former falsifies,
depreciates and denies it Once the concept "nature" was taken to mean
the opposite of the concept God, the word "natural" had to acquire the
meaning of abominable,--the whole of that fictitious world takes its
root in the hatred of nature (--reality!--), it is the expression of
profound discomfiture in the presence of reality.... _But this explains
everything._ What is the only kind of man who has reasons for wriggling
out of reality by lies? The man who suffers from reality. But in
order to suffer from reality one must be a bungled portion of it. The
preponderance of pain over pleasure is the _cause_ of that fictitious
morality and religion: but any such preponderance furnishes the formula
for decadence.
16
A criticism of the Christian concept of God inevitably leads to the
same conclusion.--A nation that still believes in itself, also has
its own God. In him it honours the conditions which enable it to
remain uppermost,--that is to say, its virtues. It projects its joy
over itself, its feeling of power, into a being, to whom it can be
thankful for such things. He who is rich, will give of his riches: a
proud people requires a God, unto whom it can _sacrifice_ things....
Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude.
A man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a
God.--Such a God must be able to benefit and to injure him, he must be
able to act the friend and the foe. He must be esteemed for his good
as well as for his evil qualities. The monstrous castration of a God
by making him a God only of goodness, would lie beyond the pale of the
desires of such a community. The evil God is just as urgently needed
as the good God: for a people in such a form of society certainly does
not owe its existence to toleration and humaneness.... What would be
the good of a God who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn,
craft, and violence?--who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous
_ardeurs_ of victory and of annihilation? No one would understand such
a God: why should one possess him?--Of course, when a people is on
the road to ruin; when it feels its belief in a future, its hope of
freedom vanishing for ever; when it becomes conscious of submission
as the most useful quality, and of the virtues of the submissive as
self-preservative measures, then its God must also modify himself.
He then becomes a tremulous and unassuming sneak; he counsels "peace
of the soul," the cessation of all hatred, leniency and "love" even
towards friend and foe. He is for ever moralising, he crawls into
the heart of every private virtue, becomes a God for everybody, he
retires from active service and becomes a Cosmopolitan.... Formerly
he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything
aggressive and desirous of power lying concealed in the heart of a
nation: now he is merely the good God.... In very truth Gods have no
other alternative, they are _either_ the Will to Power--in which case
they are always the Gods of whole nations,--or, on the other hand, the
incapacity for power--in which case they necessarily become good.
17
Wherever the Will to Power, no matter in what form, begins to decline,
a physiological retrogression, decadence, always supervenes. The
godhead of _decadence,_ shorn of its masculine virtues and passions
is perforce converted into the God of the physiologically degraded,
of the weak. Of course they do not call themselves the weak, they
call themselves "the good." ... No hint will be necessary to help you
to understand at what moment in history the dualistic fiction of a
good and an evil God first became possible. With the same instinct by
which the subjugated reduce their God to "Goodness in itself," they
also cancel the good qualities from their conqueror's God; they avenge
themselves on their masters by diabolising the latter's God.--The _good
God_ and the devil as well:--both the abortions of decadence.--How
is it possible that we are still so indulgent towards the simplicity
of Christian theologians to-day, as to declare with them that the
evolution of the concept God, from the "God of Israel," the God of
a people, to the Christian God, the quintessence of all goodness,
marks a _step forward?_--But even Renan does this. As if Renan had
a right to simplicity! Why the very contrary stares one in the face.
When the pre-requisites of _ascending_ life, when everything strong,
plucky, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept
of God, and step by step he has sunk down to the symbol of a staff
for the weary, of a last straw for all those who are drowning; when
he becomes the pauper's God, the sinner's God, the sick man's God
_par excellence,_ and the attri bute "Saviour," "Redeemer," remains
_over_ as the one essential attri bute of divinity: what does such a
metamorphosis, such an abasement of the godhead imply?--Undoubtedly,
"the kingdom of God" has thus become larger. Formerly all he had was
his people, his "chosen" people. Since then he has gone travelling
over foreign lands, just as his people have done; since then he has
never rested anywhere: until one day he felt at home everywhere, the
Great Cosmopolitan,--until he got the "greatest number," and half the
world on his side. But the God of the "greatest number," the democrat
among gods, did not become a proud hea then god notwithstanding: he
remained a Jew, he remained the God of the back streets, the God of
all dark corners and hovels, of all the unwholesome quarters of the
world!... His universal empire is now as ever a netherworld empire,
an infirmary, a subterranean empire, a ghetto-empire.... And he
himself is so pale, so weak, so decadent ... Even the palest of the
pale were able to master him--our friends the metaphysicians, those
albinos of thought. They spun their webs around him so long that
ultimately he was hypnotised by their movements and himself became a
spider, a metaphysician. Thenceforward he once more began spinning the
world out of his inner being--_sub specie Spinoz,_--thenceforward
he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and ever more
anmic, became "ideal," became "pure spirit," became _"absotutum"_ and
"thing-in-itself." ... _The decline and fall of a god:_ God became the
"thing-in-itself."
18
The Christian concept of God--God as the deity of the sick, God as a
spider, God as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of God that
has ever been attained on earth. Maybe it represents the low-water
mark in the evolutionary ebb of the godlike type God degenerated into
the _contradiction of life,_ instead of being its transfiguration and
eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life, nature, and the will to
life! God is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every
lie concerning a beyond! In God, nonentity is deified, and the will to
nonentity is declared holy!
19
The fact that the strong races of Northern Europe did not repudiate
the Christian God, certainly does not do any credit to their religious
power, not to speak of their taste They ought to have been able
successfully to cope with such a morbid and decrepit offshoot of
decadence. And a curse lies on their heads; because they were unable to
cope with him: they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part
of all their instincts,--since then they have not _created_ any other
God! Two thousand years have passed and not a single new God! But still
there exists, and as if by right,--like an _ultimum_ and _maximum_ of
god-creating power,--the _creator spiritus_ in man, this miserable God
of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid creature of decay, nonentity,
concept and contradiction, in which all the instincts of decadence, all
the cowardices and languors of the soul find their sanction!----
20
With my condemnation of Christianity I should not like to have done
an injustice to a religion which is related to it and the number of
whose followers is even greater; I refer to Buddhism. As nihilistic
religions, they are akin,--they are religions of decadence,--while
each is separated from the other in the most extraordinary fashion.
For being able to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is
profoundly grateful to Indian scholars.--Buddhism is a hundred times
more realistic than Christianity,--it is part of its constitutional
heritage to be able to face problems objectively and coolly, it is
the outcome of centuries of lasting philosophical activity. The
concept "God" was already exploded when it appeared. Buddhism is
the only really _positive_ religion to be found in history, even
in its epistemology (which is strict phenomenalism)--it no longer
speaks of the "struggle with _sin_" but fully recognising the true
nature of reality it speaks of the "struggle with _pain._" It already
has--and this distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,--the
self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,--to use my own
phraseology, it stands _Beyond Good and Evil._ The two physiological
facts upon which it rests and upon which it bestows its attention
are: in the first place excessive irritability of feeling, which
manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to pain, _and also_ as
super-spiritualisation, an all-too-lengthy sojourn amid concepts and
logical procedures, under the influence of which the personal instinct
has suffered in favour of the "impersonal." (--Both of these states
will be known to a few of my readers, the objective ones, who, like
myself, will know them from experience.) Thanks to these physiological
conditions, a state of depression set in, which Buddha sought to combat
by means of hygiene. Against it, he prescribes life in the open, a life
of travel; moderation and careful choice in food; caution in regard to
all intoxicating liquor, as also in regard to all the passions which
tend to create bile and to heat the blood; and he deprecates care
either on one's own or on other people's account He recommends ideas
that bring one either peace or good cheer,--he invents means whereby
the habit of contrary ideas may be lost He understands goodness--being
good--as promoting health. _Prayer_ is out of the question, as is
also _asceticism;_ there is neither a Categorical Imperative nor any
discipline whatsoever, even within the walls of a monastery (--it is
always possible to leave it if one wants to). All these things would
have been only a means of accentuating the excessive irritability
already referred to. Precisely on this account he does not exhort his
followers to wage war upon those who do not share their views; nothing
is more abhorred in his doctrine than the feeling of revenge, of
aversion, and of resentment (--"not through hostility doth hostility
end": the touching refrain of the whole of Buddhism....) And in this
he was right; for it is precisely these passions which are thoroughly
unhealthy in view of the principal dietetic object The mental fatigue
which he finds already existent and which expresses itself in
excessive "objectivity" (_i.e._, the enfeeblement of the individual's
interest--loss of ballast and of "egoism"), he combats by leading
the spiritual interests as well imperatively back to the individual
In Buddha's doctrine egoism is a duty: the thing which is above all
necessary, _i.e.,_ "how canst thou be rid of suffering" regulates
and defines the whole of the spiritual diet (--let anyone but think
of that Athenian who also declared war upon pure "scientificality,"
Socrates, who made a morality out of personal egoism even in the realm
of problems).
21
The pre-requisites for Buddhism are a very mild climate, great
gentleness and liberality in the customs of a people and _no_
militarism. The movement must also originate among the higher and
even learned classes. Cheerfulness, peace and absence of desire, are
the highest of inspirations, and they are _realised._ Buddhism is not
a religion in which perfection is merely aspired to: perfection is
the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts of the subjugated
and oppressed come to the fore: it is the lowest classes who seek
their salvation in this religion. Here the pastime, the manner of
killing time is to practise the casuistry of sin, self-criticism, and
conscience inquisition. Here the ecstasy in the presence of a _powerful
being,_ called "god," is constantly maintained by means of prayer;
while the highest thing is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as an
act of "grace" Here plain dealing is also entirely lacking: concealment
and the darkened room are Christian. Here the body is despised, hygiene
is repudiated as sensual; the church repudiates even cleanliness (--the
first Christian measure after the banishment of the Moors was the
closing of the public baths, of which Cordova alone possessed 270).
A certain spirit of cruelty towards one's self and others is also
Christian: hatred of all those who do not share one's views; the will
to persecute Sombre and exciting ideas are in the foreground; the most
coveted states and those which are endowed with the finest names, are
really epileptic in their nature; diet is selected in such a way as
to favour morbid symptoms and to over-excite the nerves. Christian,
too, is the mortal hatred of the earth's rulers,--the "noble,"--and
at the same time a sort of concealed and secret competition with them
(the subjugated leave the "body" to their master--all they want is
the "soul"). Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of
courage, freedom, intellectual _libertinage;_ Christian is the hatred
of the _senses,_ of the joys of the senses, of joy in general.
22
When Christianity departed from its native soil, which consisted of the
lowest classes, the _submerged masses_ of the ancient world, and set
forth in quest of power among barbaric nations, it no longer met with
exhausted men but inwardly savage and self-lacerating men--the strong
but bungled men. Here, dissatisfaction with one's self, suffering
through one's self, is not as in the case of Buddhism, excessive
irritability and susceptibility to pain, but rather, conversely, it
is an inordinate desire for inflicting pain, for a discharge of the
inner tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity was in need of
_barbaric_ ideas and values, in order to be able to master barbarians:
such are for instance, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking
of blood at communion, the contempt of the intellect and of culture;
torture in all its forms, sensual and non-sensual; the great pomp of
the cult Buddhism is a religion for _senile_ men, for races which
have become kind, gentle, and over-spiritual, and which feel pain too
easily (--Europe is not nearly ripe for it yet--); it calls them back
to peace and cheerfulness, to a regimen for the intellect, to a certain
hardening of the body. Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey_;
its expedient is to make them _ill,_--to render feeble is the Christian
recipe for taming, for "civilisation." Buddhism is a religion for the
close and exhaustion of civilisation; Christianity does not even find
civilisation at hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it lays
the foundation of civilisation.
23
Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder, more truthful,
more objective. It no longer requires to justify pain and its
susceptibility to suffering by the interpretation of sin,--it simply
says what it thinks, "I suffer." To the barbarian, on the other hand,
suffering in itself is not a respectable thing: in order to acknowledge
to himself that he suffers, what he requires, in the first place, is
an explanation (his instinct directs him more readily to deny his
suffering, or to endure it in silence). In his case, the word "devil"
was a blessing: man had an almighty and terrible enemy,--he had no
reason to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.--
At bottom there are in Christianity one or two subtleties which belong
to the Orient In the first place it knows that it is a matter of
indifference whether a thing be true or not; but that it is of the
highest importance that it should be believed to be true. Truth and
the belief that something is true: two totally separate worlds of
interest, almost _opposite worlds,_ the road to the one and the road to
the other lie absolutely apart To be initiated into this fact almost
constitutes one a sage in the Orient: the Brahmins understood it thus,
so did Plato, and so does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If for
example it give anyone pleasure to believe himself delivered from sin,
it is _not_ a necessary prerequisite thereto that he should be sinful,
but only that he should _feel_ sinful. If, however, _faith_ is above
all necessary, then reason, knowledge, and scientific research must be
brought into evil repute: the road to truth becomes the _forbidden_
road.--Strong _hope_ is a much greater stimulant of life than any
single realised joy could be. Sufferers must be sustained by a hope
which no actuality can contradict,--and which cannot ever be realised:
the hope of another world. (Precisely on account of this power that
hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the Greeks regarded it as
the evil of evils, as the most _mischievous_ evil: it remained behind
in Pandora's box.) In order that _love_ may be possible, God must be a
person. In order that the lowest instincts may also make their voices
heard God must be young. For the ardour of the women a beautiful saint,
and for the ardour of the men a Virgin Mary has to be pressed into the
foreground. All this on condition that Christianity wishes to rule
over a certain soil, on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already
determined the _notion_ of a cult. To insist upon _chastity_ only
intensifies the vehemence and profundity of the religious instinct--it
makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.--Love is the
state in which man sees things most widely different from what they
are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the
sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures
more than at other times; he submits to everything. The thing was to
discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means
the worst in life is overcome--it is no longer even seen.--So much
for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I call them the
three Christian _precautionary measures._--Buddhism is too full of aged
wisdom, too positivistic to be shrewd in this way.
24
Here I only touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity.
The first principle of its solution reads: Christianity can be
understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew,--it is
not a counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is the rational
outcome of the latter, one step further in its appalling logic. In
the formula of the Saviour: "for Salvation is of the Jews."--The
second principle is: the psychological type of the Galilean is still
recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter degeneration (which
is at once a distortion and an overloading with foreign features) that
he was able to serve the purpose for which he has been used,--namely,
as the type of a Redeemer of mankind.
The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world,
because when they were confronted with the question of Being or
non-Being, with simply uncanny deliberateness, they preferred Being
_at any price:_ this price was the fundamental _falsification_ of all
Nature, all the naturalness and all the reality, of the inner quite
as much as of the outer world. They hedged themselves in behind all
those conditions under which hitherto a people has been able to live,
has been allowed to live; of themselves they created an idea which was
the reverse of _natural_ conditions,--each in turn, they twisted first
religion, then the cult, then morality, history and psychology, about
in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they were made _to contradict
their natural value._ We meet with the same phenomena again, and
exaggerated to an incalculable degree, although only as a copy:--the
Christian Church as compared with the "chosen people," lacks all
claim to originality. Precisely on this account the Jews are the most
_fatal_ people in the history of the world: their ultimate influence
has falsified mankind to such an extent, that even to this day the
Christian can be anti-Semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he
himself is the _final consequence of Judaism._
It was in my "Genealogy of Morals" that I first gave a
psychological exposition of the idea of the antithesis noble and
_resentment-morality,_ the latter having arisen out of an attitude
of negation to the former: but this is Judo-Christian morality
heart and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to everything that
represents the ascending movement of life, prosperity, power,
beauty, and self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment,
become genius, bad to invent _another_ world, from the standpoint
of which that _Yea-saying_ to life appeared as _the_ most evil and
most abominable thing. From the psychological standpoint the Jewish
people are possessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid
impossible conditions, with profound self-preservative intelligence,
it voluntarily took the side of all the instincts of decadence,--_not_
as though dominated by them, but because it detected a power in them
by means of which it could assert itself _against_ "the world." The
Jews are the opposite of all _decadents_: they have been forced to
represent them to the point of illusion, and with a _non plus ultra_ of
histrionic genius, they have known how to set themselves at the head
of all decadent movements (St Paul and Christianity for instance), in
order to create something from them which is stronger than every party
_saying Yea to life._ For the category of men which aspires to power in
Judaism and Christianity,--that is to say, for the sacerdotal class,
decadence is but a _means;_ this category of men has a vital interest
in making men sick, and in turning the notions "good" and "bad," "true"
and "false," upside down in a manner which is not only dangerous to
life, but also slanders it.
25
The history of Israel is invaluable as the typical history of every
_denaturalization_ of natural values: let me point to five facts
which relate thereto. Originally, and above all in the period of
the kings, even Israel's attitude to all things was the _right_ one
--that is to say, the natural one. Its Jehovah was the expression of
its consciousness of power, of its joy over itself, of its hope for
itself: victory and salvation were expected from him, through him it
was confident that Nature would give what a people requires--above
all rain. Jehovah is the God of Israel, and _consequently_ the God
of justice: this is the reasoning of every people which is in the
position of power, and which has a good conscience in that position. In
the solemn cult both sides of this self-affirmation of a people find
expression: it is grateful for the great strokes of fate by means of
which it became uppermost; it is grateful for the regularity in the
succession of the seasons and for all good fortune in the rearing of
cattle and in the tilling of the soil.--This state of affairs remained
the ideal for some considerable time, even after it had been swept away
in a deplorable manner by anarchy from within and the Assyrians from
without But the people still retained, as their highest desideratum,
that vision of a king who was a good soldier and a severe judge;
and he who retained it most of all was that typical prophet (--that
is to say, critic and satirist of the age), Isaiah.--But all hopes
remained unrealised. The old God was no longer able to do what he had
done formerly. He ought to have been dropped. What happened? The idea
of him was changed,--the idea of him was denaturalised: this was the
price they paid for retaining him.--Jehovah, the God of "Justice,"--is
no longer one with Israel, no longer the expression of a people's
sense of dignity: he is only a god on certain conditions.... The
idea of him becomes a weapon in the hands of priestly agitators who
henceforth interpret all happiness as a reward, all unhappiness as a
punishment for disobedience to God, for "sin": that most fraudulent
method of interpretation which arrives at a so-called "moral order
of the Universe," by means of which the concept "cause" and "effect"
is turned upside down. Once natural causation has been swept out of
the world by reward and punishment, a causation _hostile to nature_
becomes necessary; whereupon all the forms of unnaturalness follow.
A God who _demands,_--in the place of a God who helps, who advises,
who is at bottom only a name for every happy inspiration of courage
and of self-reliance.... Morality is no longer the expression of the
conditions of life and growth, no longer the most fundamental instinct
of life, but it has become abstract, it has become the opposite of
life,--Morality as the fundamental perversion of the imagination,
as the "evil eye" for all things. What is Jewish morality, what is
Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness
polluted with the idea of "sin"; well-being interpreted as a danger, as
a "temptation"; physiological indisposition poisoned by means of the
canker-worm of conscience....
26
The concept of God falsified; the concept of morality falsified: but
the Jewish priesthood did not stop at this. No use could be made of
the whole _history_ of Israel, therefore it must go! These priests
accomplished that miracle of falsification, of which the greater part
of the Bible is the document: with unparalleled contempt and in the
teeth of all tradition and historical facts, they interpreted their own
people's past in a religious manner,--that is to say, they converted
it into a ridiculous mechanical process of salvation, on the principle
that all sin against Jehovah led to punishment, and that all pious
worship of Jehovah led to reward. We would feel this shameful act of
historical falsification far more poignantly if the ecclesiastical
interpretation of history through millenniums had not blunted almost
all our sense for the demands of uprightness _in historicis._ And
the church is seconded by the philosophers: _the_ of "a moral order
of the universe" permeates the whole development even of more modern
philosophy. What does a "moral order of the universe" mean? That once
and for all there is such a thing as a will of God which determines
what man has to do and what he has to leave undone; that the value
of a people or of an individual is measured according to how much or
how little the one or the other obeys the will of God; that in the
destinies of a people or of an individual, the will of God shows
itself dominant, that is to say it punishes or rewards according to
the degree of obedience. In the place of this miserable falsehood,
_reality_ says: a parasitical type of man, who can flourish only at the
cost of all the healthy elements of life, the priest abuses the name
of God: he calls that state of affairs in which the priest determines
the value of things "the Kingdom of God"; he calls the means whereby
such a state of affairs is attained or maintained, "the Will of God";
with cold-blooded cynicism he measures peoples, ages and individuals
according to whether they favour or oppose the ascendancy of the
priesthood. Watch him at work: in the hands of the Jewish priesthood
the Augustan Age in the history of Israel became an age of decline;
the exile, the protracted misfortune transformed itself into eternal
_punishment_ for the Augustan Age--that age in which the priest did not
yet exist Out of the mighty and thoroughly free-born figures of the
history of Israel, they made, according to their requirements, either
wretched bigots and hypocrites, or "godless ones": they simplified
the psychology of every great event to the idiotic formula "obedient
or disobedient to God."--A step further: the "Will of God," that is
to say the self-preservative measures of the priesthood, must be
known--to this end a "revelation" is necessary. In plain English: a
stupendous literary fraud becomes necessary, "holy scriptures" are
discovered,--and they are published abroad with all hieratic pomp,
with days of penance and lamentations over the long state Of "sin."
The "Will of God" has long stood firm: the whole of the trouble
lies in the fact that the "Holy Scriptures" have been discarded....
Moses was already the "Will of God" revealed.... What had happened?
With severity and pedantry, the priest had formulated once and for
all--even to the largest and smallest contri butions that were to be
paid to him (--not forgetting the daintiest portions of meat; for the
priest is a consumer of beef-steaks)--_what he wanted,_ "what the Will
of God was." ... Hence-forward everything became so arranged that the
priests were _indispensable everywhere._ At all the natural events of
life, at birth, at marriage, at the sick-bed, at death,--not to speak
of the sacrifice ("the meal"),--the holy parasite appears in order
to denaturalise, or in his language, to "sanctify," everything....
For this should be understood: every natural custom, every natural
institution (the State, the administration of justice, marriage, the
care of the sick and the poor), every demand inspired by the instinct
of life, in short everything that has a value in itself, is rendered
absolutely worthless and even dangerous through the parasitism of the
priest (or of the "moral order of the universe"): a sanction after
the fact is required,--a _power which imparts value_ is necessary,
which in so doing says, Nay to nature, and which by this means alone
_creates_ a valuation.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature:
it is only at this price that he exists at all.--Disobedience to God,
that is to say, to the priest, to the "law," now receives the name of
"sin"; the means of "reconciling one's self with God" are of course
of a nature which render subordination to the priesthood all the
more fundamental: the priest alone is able to "save." ... From the
psychological standpoint, in every society organised upon a hieratic
basis, "sins" are indispensable: they are the actual weapons of power,
the priest _lives_ upon sins, it is necessary for him that people
should "sin." ... Supreme axiom: "God forgiveth him that repenteth"--in
plain English: _him that submitteth himself to the priest._
27
Christianity grew out of an utterly _false_ soil, in which all nature,
every natural value, every _reality_ had the deepest instincts of the
ruling class against it; it was a form of deadly hostility to reality
which has never been surpassed. The "holy people" which had retained
only priestly values and priestly names for all things, and which, with
a logical consistency that is terrifying, had divorced itself from
everything still powerful on earth as if it were "unholy," "worldly,"
"sinful,"--this people created a final formula for its instinct which
was consistent to the point of self-suppression; as _Christianity_ it
denied even the last form of reality, the "holy people," the "chosen
people," _Jewish_ reality itself. The case is of supreme interest:
the small insurrectionary movement christened with the name of Jesus
of Nazareth, is the Jewish instinct _over again,_--in other words,
it is the sacerdotal instinct which can no longer endure the priest
as a fact; it is the discovery of a kind of life even more fantastic
than the one previously conceived, a vision of life which is even
more unreal than that which the organisation of a church stipulates.
Christianity denies the church.[3]
I fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which
rightly or _wrongly_ Jesus is understood to have been the promoter,
if it were not directed against the Jewish church,--the word "church"
being used here in precisely the same sense in which it is used to-day.
It was an insurrection against the "good and the just," against
the "prophets of Israel," against the hierarchy of society--not
against the latter's corruption, but against caste, privilege, order,
formality. It was the lack of faith in "higher men," it was a "Nay"
uttered against everything that was tinctured with the blood of priests
and theologians. But the hierarchy which was set in question if only
temporarily by this movement, formed the construction of piles upon
which, alone, the Jewish people was able to subsist in the midst of the
"waters"; it was that people's _last_ chance of survival wrested from
the world at enormous pains, the _residuum_ of its political autonomy:
to attack this construction was tantamount to attacking the most
profound popular instinct, the most tenacious national will to live
that has ever existed on earth. This saintly anarchist who called the
lowest of the low, the outcasts and "sinners," the Chandala of Judaism,
to revolt against the established order of things (and in language
which, if the gospels are to be trusted, would get one sent to Siberia
even to-day)--this man was a political criminal in so far as political
criminals were possible in a community so absurdly non-political. This
brought him to the cross: the proof of this is the inscription found
thereon. He died for _his_ sins--and no matter how often the contrary
has been asserted there is absolutely nothing to show that he died for
the sins of others.
28
As to whether he was conscious of this contrast, or whether he was
merely _regarded_ as such, is quite another question. And here, alone,
do I touch upon the problem of the psychology of the Saviour.--I
confess there are few books which I have as much difficulty in reading
as the gospels. These difficulties are quite different from those which
allowed the learned curiosity of the German, mind to celebrate one
of its most memorable triumphs. Many years have now elapsed since I,
like every young scholar, with the sage conscientiousness of a refined
philologist, relished the work of the incomparable Strauss. I was then
twenty years of age; now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What
do I care about the contradictions of "tradition"? How can saintly
legends be called "tradition" at all! The stories of saints constitute
the most ambiguous literature on earth: to apply the scientific method
to them, _when there are no other documents to hand,_ seems to me to be
a fatal procedure from the start--simply learned fooling.
29
The point that concerns me is the psychological type of the Saviour.
This type might be contained in the gospels, in spite of the gospels,
and however much it may have been mutilated, or overladen with
foreign features: just as that of Francis of Assisi is contained
in his legends in spite of his legends. It is _not_ a question of
the truth concerning what he has done, what he has said, and how he
actually died; but whether his type may still be conceived in any way,
whether it has been handed down to us at all?--The attempts which
to my knowledge have been made to read the _history_ of a "soul" out
of the gospels, seem to me to point only to disreputable levity in
psychological matters. M. Renan, that buffoon _in psychologies,_ has
contri buted the two most monstrous ideas imaginable to the explanation
of the type of Jesus: the idea of the _genius_ and the idea of the
_hero_ ("_hros_"). But if there is anything thoroughly unevangelical
surely it is the idea of the hero. It is precisely the reverse of all
struggle, of all consciousness of taking part in the fight, that has
become instinctive here: the inability to resist is here converted into
a morality ("resist not evil," the profoundest sentence in the whole of
the gospels, their key in a certain sense), the blessedness of peace,
of gentleness, of not _being able_ to be an enemy. What is the meaning
of "glad tidings"?--True life, eternal life has been found--it is not
promised, it is actually here, it is in _you;_ it is life in love, in
love free from all selection or exclusion, free from all distance.
Everybody is the child of God--Jesus does not by any means claim
anything for himself alone,--as the child of God everybody is equal to
everybody else.... Fancy making Jesus a _hero!_--And what a tremendous
misunderstanding the word "genius" is! Our whole idea of "spirit,"
which is a civilised idea, could have had no meaning whatever in the
world in which Jesus lived. In the strict terms of the physiologist, a
very different word ought to be used here.... We know of a condition of
morbid irritability of the sense of _touch,_ which recoils shuddering
from every kind of contact, and from every attempt at grasping a solid
object. Any such physiological _habitus_ reduced to its ultimate
logical conclusion, becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a
flight into the "intangible," into the "incomprehensible"; a repugnance
to all formul, to every notion of time and space, to everything that
is established such as customs, institutions, the church; a feeling
at one's ease in a world in which no sign of reality is any longer
visible, a merely "inner" world, a "true" world, an "eternal" world....
"The Kingdom of God is within you"...
30
_The instinctive hatred of reality_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to
be "touched" at all, because every sensation strikes too deep.
_The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all
boundaries and distances in feeling,_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which regards all resistance,
all compulsory resistance as insufferable _anguish_(--that is to say,
as harmful, as _deprecated_ by the self-preservative instinct), and
which knows blessedness (happiness) only when it is no longer obliged
to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental,--love as
the Only ultimate possibility of life....
These are the two _physiological realities_ upon which and out of which
the doctrine of salvation has grown. I call them a sublime further
development of hedonism, upon a thoroughly morbid soil. Epicureanism,
the pagan theory of salvation, even though it possessed a large
proportion of Greek vitality and nervous energy, remains the most
closely related to the above. Epicurus was a _typical_ decadent: and I
was the first to recognise him as such.--The terror of pain, even of
infinitely slight pain--such a state cannot possibly help culminating
in a _religion_ of love....
31
I have given my reply to the problem in advance. The prerequisite
thereto was the admission of the fact that the type of the Saviour has
reached us only in a very distorted form. This distortion in itself
is extremely feasible: for many reasons a type of that kind could not
be pure, whole, and free from additions. The environment in which
this strange figure moved, must have left its mark upon him, and the
history, the _destiny_ of the first Christian communities must have
done so to a still greater degree. Thanks to that destiny, the type
must have been enriched retrospectively with features which can be
interpreted only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda
That strange and morbid world into which the gospels lead us--a
world which seems to have been drawn from a Russian novel, where
the scum and dross of society, diseases of the nerves and "childish"
imbecility seem to have given each other rendezvous--must in any case
have _coarsened_ the type: the first disciples especially must have
translated an existence conceived entirely in symbols and abstractions
into their own crudities, in order at least to be able to understand
something about it,--for them the type existed only after it had
been cast in a more familiar mould.... The prophet, the Messiah, the
future judge, the teacher of morals, the thaumaturgist, John the
Baptist--all these were but so many opportunities of misunderstanding
the type.... Finally, let us not under-rate the _proprium_ of all great
and especially sectarian veneration: very often it effaces from the
venerated object, all the original and frequently painfully un-familiar
traits and idiosyncrasies--_it does not even see them._ It is greatly
to be deplored that no Dostoiewsky lived in the neighbourhood of this
most interesting decadent,--I mean someone who would have known how to
feel the poignant charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the morbid,
and the childlike. Finally, the type, as an example of decadence, may
actually have been extraordinarily multifarious and contradictory:
this, as a possible alternative, is not to be altogether ignored.
Albeit, everything seems to point away from it; for, precisely in this
case, tradition would necessarily have been particularly true and
objective: whereas we have reasons for assuming the reverse. Meanwhile
a yawning chasm of contradiction separates the mountain, lake, and
pastoral preacher, who strikes us as a Buddha on a soil only very
slightly Hindu, from that combative fanatic, the mortal enemy of
theologians and priests, whom Renan's malice has glorified as "_le
grand matre en ironie._" For my part, I do not doubt but what the
greater part of this venom (and even of _esprit_) was inoculated into
the type of the Master only as the outcome of the agitated condition
of Christian propaganda. For we have ample reasons for knowing the
unscrupulousness of all sectarians when they wish to contrive their own
_apology_ out of the person of their master. When the first Christian
community required a discerning, wrangling, quarrelsome, malicious and
hair-splitting theologian, to oppose other theologians, it created its
"God" according to its needs; just as it did not hesitate to put upon
his lips those utterly unevangelical ideas of "his second coming," the
"last judgment,"--ideas with which it could not then dispense,--and
every kind of expectation and promise which happened to be current.
32
I can only repeat that I am opposed to the importation of the fanatic
into the type of the Saviour: the word "_imprieux,_" which Renan
uses, in itself annuls the type. The "glad tidings" are simply that
there are no longer any contradictions, that the Kingdom of Heaven is
for the _children;_ the faith which raises its voice here is not a
faith that has been won by a struggle,--it is to hand, it was there
from the beginning, it is a sort of spiritual return to childishness.
The case of delayed and undeveloped puberty in the organism, as the
result of degeneration is at least familiar to physiologists. A faith
of this sort does not show anger, it does not blame, neither does it
defend itself: it does not bring "the sword,"--it has no inkling of
how it will one day establish feuds between man and man. It does not
demonstrate itself, either by miracles, or by reward and promises, or
yet "through the scriptures": it is in itself at every moment its own
miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its own "Kingdom of God." This
faith cannot be formulated--it lives, it guards against formulas. The
accident of environment, of speech, of preparatory culture, certainly
determines a particular series of conceptions: early Christianity deals
only in Judo-Semitic conceptions (--the eating and drinking at the
last supper form part of these,--this idea which like everything Jewish
has been abused so maliciously by the church). But one should guard
against seeing anything more than a language of signs, semiotics, an
opportunity for parables in all this. The very fact that no word is to
be taken literally, is the only condition on which this Anti-realist
is able to speak at all. Among Indians he would have made use of the
ideas of Sankhyara, among Chinese, those of Lao-tze--and would not
have been aware of any difference. With a little terminological laxity
Jesus might be called a "free spirit"--he cares not a jot for anything
that is established: the word _killeth,_ everything fixed _killtth._
The idea, _experience,_ "life" as he alone knows it, is, according to
him, opposed to every kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He
speaks only of the innermost things: "life" or "truth," or "light," is
his expression for the innermost thing,--everything else, the whole of
reality, the whole of nature, language even, has only the value of a
sign, of a simile for him.--It is of paramount importance not to make
any mistake at this point, however great may be the temptation thereto
that lies in Christian--I mean to say, ecclesiastical prejudice. Any
such essential symbolism stands beyond the pale of all religion, all
notions of cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of
the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books and
all Art--for his "wisdom" is precisely the complete ignorance[4] of the
existence of such things. He has not even heard speak of _culture,_ he
does not require to oppose it,--he does not deny it.... The same holds
good of the state, of the whole of civil and social order, of work
and of war--he never had any reason to deny the world, he had not the
vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical concept "the world." ... Denying
is precisely what was quite impossible to him.--Dialectic is also
quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any "truth" can be
proved by argument (--his proofs are inner "lights," inward feelings of
happiness and self-affirmation, a host of "proofs of power"--). Neither
can such a doctrine contradict, it does not even realise the fact that
there are or can be other doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of
imagining a contrary judgment.... Wherever it encounters such things,
from a feeling of profound sympathy it bemoans such "blindness,"--for
it sees the "light,"--but it raises no objections.
33
The whole psychology of the "gospels" lacks the concept of guilt and
punishment, as also that of reward. "Sin," any sort of aloofness
between God and man, is done away with,--_this is precisely what
constitutes the "glad tidings"._ Eternal bliss is not promised, it is
not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality--the rest
consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it....
The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice
of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a "faith" which
distinguishes the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes
himself by means of a _different_ mode of action. He does not resist
his enemy either by words or in his heart He draws no distinction
between foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles ("the
neighbour" really means the co-religionist, the Jew). He is angry with
no one, he despises no one. He neither shows himself at the tribunals
nor does he acknowledge any of their claims ("Swear not at all").
He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when her
infidelity has been proved.--All this is at bottom one principle, it is
all the outcome of one instinct--
The life of the Saviour was naught else than this practice,--neither
was his death. He no longer required any formul, any rites for his
relations with God--not even prayer. He has done with all the Jewish
teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows the _mode_
of life which makes one feel "divine," "saved," "evangelical," and
at all times a "child of God." _Not_ "repentance," _not_ "prayer and
forgiveness" are the roads to God: the _evangelical mode of life
alone_ leads to God, it _is_ "God."--That which the gospels abolished
was the Judaism of the concepts "sin," "forgiveness of sin," "faith,"
"salvation through faith,"--the whole doctrine of the Jewish church was
denied by the "glad tidings."
The profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel "in
Heaven," in order to feel "eternal," while in every other respect
one feels by _no_ means "in Heaven": this alone is the psychological
reality of "Salvation."--A new life and _not_ a new faith....
34
If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is
this that he regarded only _inner_ facts as facts, as "truths,"--that
he understood the rest, everything natural, temporal, material
and historical, only as signs, as opportunities for parables. The
concept "the Son of Man," is not a concrete personality belonging to
history, anything individual and isolated, but an "eternal" fact,
a psychological symbol divorced from the concept of time. The same
is true, and in the highest degree, of the _God_ of this typical
symbolist, of the "Kingdom of God," of the "Kingdom of Heaven," and
of the "Sonship of God." Nothing is more un-Christlike than the
_ecclesiastical crudity_ of a personal God, of a Kingdom of God that
is coming, of a "Kingdom of Heaven" beyond, of a "Son of God" as the
second person of the Trinity. All this, if I may be forgiven the
expression, is as fitting as a square peg in a round hole--and oh!
what a hole!--the gospels: a _world-historic_ cynicism in the scorn
of symbols.... But what is meant by the signs "Father" and "Son," is
of course obvious--not to everybody, I admit: with the word "Son,"
_entrance_ into the feeling of the general transfiguration of all
things (beatitude) is expressed, with the word "Father," _this feeling
itself_ the feeling of eternity and of perfection.--I blush to have to
remind you of what the Church has done with this symbolism: has it not
set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian "faith"? And
a dogma of immaculate conception into the bargain?... _But by so doing
it defiled conception._----
The "Kingdom of Heaven" is a state of the heart--not something
which exists "beyond this earth" or comes to you "after death." The
whole idea of natural death is lacking in the gospels. Death is not
a bridge, not a means of access: it is absent because it belongs to
quite a different and merely apparent world the only use of which is
to furnish signs, similes. The "hour of death" is not a Christian
idea--the "hour," time in general, physical life and its crises do not
exist for the messenger of "glad tidings." ... The "Kingdom of God" is
not some thing that is expected; it has no yesterday nor any day after
to-morrow, it is not going to come in a "thousand years"--it is an
experience of a human heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere....
35
This "messenger of glad tidings" died as he lived and as he
taught--_not_ in order "to save mankind," but in order to show how one
ought to live. It was a mode of life that he bequea thed to mankind: his
behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners,
his accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,--his demeanour on
the _cross._ He offers no resistance; he does not defend his rights;
he takes no step to ward off the most extreme consequences, he does
more,--he provokes them. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in
those, who treat him ill.... _Not_ to defend one's self, _not_ to show
anger, not to hold anyone responsible.... But to refrain from resisting
even the evil one,--to _love_ him....
36
--Only we spirits that have _become free,_ possess the necessary
condition for understanding something which nineteen centuries have
misunderstood,--that honesty which has become an instinct and a passion
in us, and which wages war upon the "holy lie" with even more vigour
than upon every other lie.... Mankind was unspeakably far from our
beneficent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the mind,
which, alone, renders the solution of such strange and subtle things
possible: at all times, with shameless egoism, all that people sought
was their _own_ advantage in these matters, the Church was built up out
of contradiction to the gospel....
Whoever might seek for signs pointing to the guiding fingers of an
ironical deity behind the great comedy of existence, would find no
small argument in the _huge note of interrogation_ that is called
Christianity. The fact that mankind is on its knees before the reverse
of that which formed the origin, the meaning and the _rights_ of
the gospel; the fact that, in the idea "Church," precisely that is
pronounced holy which the "messenger of glad tidings" regarded as
_beneath_ him, as _behind_ him--one might seek in vain for a more
egregious example _of world-historic_ irony---
37
--Our age is proud of its historical sense: how could it allow
itself to be convinced of the nonsensical idea that at the beginning
Christianity consisted only of the _clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist
and of the Saviour,_ and that all its spiritual and symbolic
side was only developed later? On the contrary: the history of
Christianity--from the death on the cross onwards--is the history of
a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism.
With every extension of Christianity over ever larger and ruder
masses, who were ever less able to grasp its first principles, the
need of _vulgarising and barbarising it_ increased proportionately--it
absorbed the teachings and rites of all the _subterranean_ cults of the
_imperium Romanum,_ as well as the nonsense of every kind of morbid
reasoning. The fatal feature of Christianity lies in the necessary
fact that its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar as the
needs to which it had to minister were morbid, base and vulgar. _Morbid
barbarism_ at last braces itself together for power in the form of the
Church--the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty, to all
loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the mind, to all frank and
kindly humanity.--_Christian_ and _noble_ values: only we spirits _who
have become free have_ re-established this contrast in values which is
the greatest that has ever existed on earth!--
38
--I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are days when I
am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy--the
_contempt of man._ And in order that I may leave you in no doubt as
to what I despise, _whom_ I despise: I declare that it is the man of
to-day, the man with whom I am fatally contemporaneous. The man of
to-day, I am asphyxiated by his foul breath.... Towards the past, like
all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly tolerant,--that is to say,
I exercise a sort of _generous_ self-control: with gloomy caution I
pass through whole millennia of this mad-house world, and whether it
be called "Christianity," "Christian Faith," or "Christian Church," I
take care not to hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders.
But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself the moment I enter
the modern age, _our_ age. Our age _knows...._ That which formerly
was merely morbid, is now positively indecent It is indecent nowadays
to be a Christian. _And it is here that my loathing begins._ I look
about me: not a word of what was formerly known as "truth" has remained
standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest even pronounce the
word "truth." Even he who makes but the most modest claims upon truth,
_must_ know at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a pope, not
only errs but actually _ties,_ with every word that he utters,--and
that he is no longer able to lie from "innocence," from "ignorance."
Even the priest knows quite as well as everybody else does that there
is no longer any "God," any "sinner" or any "Saviour," and that "free
will," and "a moral order of the universe" are _lies._ Seriousness,
the profound self-conquest of the spirit no longer allows anyone to
be _ignorant_ about this.... All the concepts of the Church have been
revealed in their true colours--that is to say, as the most vicious
frauds on earth, calculated to _depreciate_ nature and all natural
values. The priest himself has been recognised as what he is--that is
to say, as the most dangerous kind of parasite, as the actual venomous
spider of existence.... At present we know, our _conscience_ knows,
the real value of the gruesome inventions which the priests and the
Church have made, _and what end they served._ By means of them that
state of self-profanation on the part of man has been attained, the
sight of which makes one heave. The concepts "Beyond," "Last Judgment,"
"Immortality of the Soul," the "soul" itself, are merely so many
instruments of torture, so many systems of cruelty, on the strength
of which the priest became and remained master.... Everybody knows
this, _and nevertheless everything remains as it was._ Whither has
the last shred of decency, of self-respect gone, if nowadays even
our statesmen--a body of men who are otherwise so unembarrassed, and
such thorough anti-Christians in deed--still declare themselves
Christians and still flock to communion?[5].... Fancy a prince at the
head of his legions, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and
self-exaltation of his people,--but _shameless_ enough to acknowledge
himself a Christian!... What then does Christianity deny? What does
it call "world"? "The world" to Christianity means that a man is a
soldier, a judge, a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values
his honour, that he desires his own advantage, that he is _proud._
... The conduct of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that
leads to a deed, is at present anti-Christian: what an _abortion of
falsehood_ modern man must be, in order to be able _without a blush_
still to call himself a Christian!----
39
--I will retrace my steps, and will tell you the _genuine_
history of Christianity.--The very word "Christianity" is a
misunderstanding,--truth to tell, there never was more than one
Christian, and he _died_ on the Cross. The "gospel" _died_ on the
cross. That which thenceforward was called "gospel" was the reverse
of that "gospel" that Christ had lived: it was "evil tidings," a
_dysangel_ It is false to the point of nonsense to see in "faith,"
in the faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing trait
of the Christian: the only thing that is Christian is the Christian
mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the Cross.... To
this day a life of this kind is still possible; for certain men, it
is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible
in all ages.... _Not_ a faith, but a course of action, above all a
course of inaction, non-interference, and a different life.... States
of consciousness, any sort of faith, a holding of certain things
for true, as every psychologist knows, are indeed of absolutely no
consequence, and are only of fifth-rate importance compared with the
value of the instincts: more exactly, the whole concept of intellectual
causality is false. To reduce the fact of being a Christian, or of
Christianity, to a holding of something for true, to a mere phenomenon
of consciousness, is tantamount to denying Christianity. _In fact
there have never been any Christians._ The "Christian," he who for two
thousand years has been called a Christian, is merely a psychological
misunderstanding of self. Looked at more closely, there ruled in
him, _notwithstanding_ all his faith, only instincts--and _what
instincts!_--"Faith" in all ages, as for instance in the case of
Luther, has always been merely a cloak, a pretext, a _screen,_ behind
which the instincts played their game,--a prudent form of _blindness_
in regard to the dominion of _certain_ instincts. "Faith" I have
already characterised as a piece of really Christian cleverness; for
people have always spoken of "faith" and acted according to their
instincts.... In the Christian's world of ideas there is nothing which
even touches reality: but I have already recognised in the instinctive
hatred of reality the actual motive force, the only driving power at
the root of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That here, even
_in psychologicis_, error is fundamental,--that is to say capable
of determining the spirit of things,--that is to say, _substance._
Take one idea away from the whole, and put one realistic fact in its
stead,--and the whole of Christianity tumbles into nonentity!--Surveyed
from above, this strangest of all facts,-a religion not only dependent
upon error, but inventive and showing signs of genius only in those
errors which are dangerous and which poison life and the human
heart--remains a _spectacle for gods,_ for those gods who are at the
same time philosophers and whom I met for instance in those celebrated
dialogues on the island of Naxos. At the moment when they get rid
of their _loathing (--and we do as well!_), they will be thankful
for the spectacle the Christians have offered: the wretched little
planet called Earth perhaps deserves on account of _this_ curious
case alone, a divine glance, and divine interest.... Let us not
therefore underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false _to the
point of innocence in falsity,_ is far above the apes,--in regard to
the Christians a certain well-known theory of Descent becomes a mere
good-natured compliment.
40
--The fate of the gospel was decided at the moment of the death,--it
hung on the "cross." ... It was only death, this unexpected and
ignominious death; it was only the cross which as a rule was reserved
simply for the _canaille,_--only this appalling paradox which
confronted the disciples with the actual riddle: _Who was that? what
was that?_--The state produced by the excited and profoundly wounded
feelings of these men, the suspicion that such a death might imply the
_refutation_ of their cause, and the terrible note of interrogation:
"why precisely thus?" will be understood only too well. In this case
everything _must_ be necessary, everything must have meaning, a reason,
the highest reason. The love of a disciple admits of no such thing as
accident. Only then did the chasm yawn: "who has killed him?" "who was
his natural enemy?"--this question rent the firmament like a flash of
lightning. Reply: _dominant_ Judaism, its ruling class. Thenceforward
the disciple felt himself in revolt _against_ established order; he
understood Jesus, after the fact, as one in _revolt against established
order._ Heretofore this warlike, this nay-saying and nay-doing feature
in Christ had been lacking; nay more, he was its contradiction. The
small primitive community had obviously understood _nothing_ of the
principal factor of all, which was the example of freedom and of
superiority to every form of _resentment_ which lay in this way of
dying. And this shows how little they understood him altogether! At
bottom Jesus could not have desired anything else by his death than to
give the strongest public _example_ and _proof_ of his doctrine....
But his disciples were very far from _forgiving this_ death--though if
they had done so it would have been in the highest sense evangelical
on their part,--neither were they prepared, with a gentle and serene
calmness of heart, to _offer_ themselves for a similar death....
Precisely the most unevangelical feeling, _revenge,_ became once more
ascendant. It was impossible for the cause to end with this death:
"compensation" and "judgment" were required (--and forsooth, what could
be more unevangelical than "compensation," "punishment," "judgment"!)
The popular expectation of a Messiah once more became prominent;
attention was fixed upon one historical moment: the "Kingdom of God"
descends to sit in judgment upon his enemies. But this proves that
everything was misunderstood: the "Kingdom of God" regarded as the last
scene of the last act, as a promise! But the Gospel had clearly been
the living, the fulfilment, the _reality_ of this "Kingdom of God."
It was precisely a death such as Christ's that was this "Kingdom of
God." It was only now that all the contempt for the Pharisees and the
theologians, and all bitter feelings towards them, were introduced
into the character of the Master,--and by this means he himself was
converted into a Pharisee and a theologian! On the other hand, the
savage veneration of these completely unhinged souls could no longer
endure that evangelical right of every man to be the child of God,
which Jesus had taught: their revenge consisted in _elevating_ Jesus in
a manner devoid of all reason, and in separating him from themselves:
just as, formerly, the Jews, with the view of revenging themselves on
their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him high
above them. The Only God, and the Only Son of God:--both were products
of resentment.
41
--And from this time forward an absurd problem rose into prominence:
"how _could_ God allow it to happen?" To this question the disordered
minds of the small community found a reply which in its absurdity
was literally terrifying: God gave his Son as a _sacrifice_ for the
forgiveness of sins. Alas! how prompt and sudden was the end of
the gospel! Expiatory sacrifice for guilt, and indeed in its most
repulsive and barbaric form,--the sacrifice of the _innocent_ for
the sins of the guilty! What appalling Paganism!--For Jesus himself
had done away with the concept "guilt,"--he denied any gulf between
God and man, he _lived_ this unity between God and man, it was this
that constituted _his_ "glad tidings." ... And he did _not_ teach it
as a privilege!--Thenceforward there was gradually imported into the
type of the Saviour the doctrine of the Last Judgment, and of the
"second coming," the doctrine of sacrificial death, and the doctrine
of _Resurrection,_ by means of which the whole concept "blessedness,"
the entire and only reality of the gospel, is conjured away--in favour
of a state _after_ death!... St Paul, with that rabbinic impudence
which characterises all his doings, rationalised this conception, this
prostitution of a conception, as follows: "if Christ did not rise from
the dead, our faith is vain."--And, in a trice, the most contemptible
of all unrealisable promises, the _impudent_ doctrine of personal
immortality, was woven out of the gospel.... St Paul even preached this
immortality as a reward.
42
You now realise what it was that came to an end with the death on the
cross: a new and thoroughly original effort towards a Buddhistic
movement of peace, towards real and _not_ merely promised _happiness
on earth._ For, as I have already pointed out, this remains the
fundamental difference between the two religions _of decadence:_
Buddhism promises little but fulfils more, Christianity promises
everything but fulfils nothing.--The "glad tidings" were followed
closely by the absolutely _worst_ tidings--those of St Paul. Paul is
the incarnation of a type which is the reverse of that of the Saviour;
he is the genius in hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the
relentless logic of hatred. And alas what did this dysangelist not
sacrifice to his hatred! Above all the Saviour himself: he nailed him
to _his_ cross. Christ's life, his example, his doctrine and death,
the sense and the right of the gospel--not a vestige of alt this
was left, once this forger, prompted by his hatred, had understood
in it only that which could serve his purpose. _Not_ reality: _not_
historical truth! ... And once more, the sacerdotal instinct of
the Jew, perpetrated the same great crime against history,--he
simply cancelled the yesterday, and the day before that, out of
Christianity; he _contrived of his own accord a history of the birth
of Christianity._ He did more: he once more falsified the history of
Israel, so as to make it appear as a prologue to _his_ mission: all the
prophets had referred to _his_ "Saviour." ... Later on the Church even
distorted the history of mankind so as to convert it into a prelude to
Christianity.... The type of the Saviour, his teaching, his life, his
death, the meaning of his death, even the sequel to his death--nothing
remained untouched, nothing was left which even remotely resembled
reality. St Paul simply transferred the centre of gravity of the whole
of that great life, to a place _behind_ this life,--in the _lie_ of
the "resuscitated" Christ. At bottom, he had no possible use for the
life of the Saviour,--he needed the death on the cross, _and_ something
more. To regard as honest a man like St Paul (a man whose home was the
very headquarters of Stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof
of the continued existence of the Saviour out of a hallucination; or
even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination,
would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: St Paul
desired the end, consequently he also desired the means.... Even what
he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom
he spread _his_ doctrine.--What he wanted was power; with St Paul the
priest again aspired to power,--he could make use only of concepts,
doctrines, symbols with which masses may be tyrannised over, and
with which herds are formed. What was the only part of Christianity
which was subsequently borrowed by Muhamed? St Paul's invention, his
expedient for priestly tyranny and to the formation of herds: the
belief in immortality--_that is to say, the doctrine of the "Last
Judgment." ..._
43
When the centre of gravity of life is laid, _not_ in life, but in a
beyond--_in nonentity,_--life is utterly robbed of its balance. The
great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in
the instincts,--everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that
promotes life and that is a guarantee of the future, henceforward
aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the
effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point.... Why
show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one's origin and one's
forebears? Why collaborate with one's fellows, and be confident? Why
be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?... All these
things are merely so many "temptations," so many deviations from the
"straight path." "One thing only is necessary." ... That everybody, as
an "immortal soul," should have equal rank, that in the totality of
beings, the "salvation" of each individual may lay claim to eternal
importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may
have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistently
_broken_ on their account,--any such magnification of every kind
of selfishness to infinity, to _insolence,_ cannot be branded with
sufficient contempt And yet it is to this miserable flattery of
personal vanity that Christianity owes its _triumph,_--by this means
it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted
people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity,
over to its side. The "salvation of the soul"--in plain English: "the
world revolves around me" ... The poison of the doctrine "_equal_
rights for all"--has been dispensed with the greatest thoroughness by
Christianity: Christianity, prompted by the most secret recesses of
bad instincts, has waged a deadly war upon all feeling of reverence
and distance between man and man--that is to say, the _prerequisite_
of all elevation, of every growth in culture; out of the resentment
of the masses it wrought its _principal weapons_ against us, against
everything noble, joyful, exalted on earth, against our happiness on
earth.... To grant "immortality" to every St Peter and St Paul, was
the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon _noble_ humanity that has
ever been perpetrated.--And do not let us underestimate the fatal
influence which, springing from Christianity, has insinuated itself
even into politics! Nowadays no one has the courage of special rights,
of rights of t dominion, of a feeling of self-respect and of respect
for his equals,--of _pathos of distance._ Our politics are diseased
with this lack of courage!--The aristocratic attitude of mind has been
most thoroughly undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if
the belief in the "privilege of the greatest number" creates and will
continue _to create revolutions,_--it is Christianity, let there be no
doubt about it, and Christian values, which convert every revolution
into blood and crime! Christianity is the revolt of all things that
crawl on their bellies against everything that is lofty: the gospel of
the "lowly" _lowers...._
44
--The Gospels are invaluable as a testimony of the corruption which
was already persistent _within_ the first Christian communities. That
which St Paul, with the logician's cynicism of a Rabbi, carried to its
logical conclusion, was nevertheless merely the process of decay which
began with the death of the Saviour.--These gospels cannot be read
too cautiously; difficulties lurk behind every word they contain. I
confess, and people will not take this amiss, that they are precisely
on that account a joy of the first rank for a psychologist,--as the
reverse of all naive perversity, as refinement _par excellence,_ as
a masterpiece of art in psychological corruption. The gospels stand
alone. Altogether the Bible allows of no comparison. The _first_ thing
to be remembered if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is, that
we are among Jews. The dissembling of holiness which, here, literally
amounts to genius, and which has never been even approximately achieved
elsewhere either by books or by men, this fraud in word and pose
which in this book is elevated to an _Art,_ is not the accident of
any individual gift, of any exceptional nature. These qualities are
a matter of _race._ With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies,
which constitutes the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership,
thanks to many centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training
and practice. The Christian, this _ultima ratio_ of falsehood, is the
Jew over again--he is even three times a Jew.... The fundamental will
only to make use of concepts, symbols and poses, which are demonstrated
by the practice of the priests, the instinctive repudiation of every
other kind of practice, every other standpoint of valuation and of
utility--all this is not only tradition, it is _hereditary;_ only as
an inheritance is it able to work like nature. The whole of mankind,
the best brains, and even the best ages--(one man only excepted who
is perhaps only a monster)--have allowed themselves to be deceived.
The gospels were read as the _book of innocence ..._ this is no
insignificant sign of the virtuosity with which deception has been
practised here.--Of course, if we could only succeed in seeing all
these amazing bigots and pretended saints, even for a moment, all
would be at an end--and it is precisely because _I_ can read no
single word of theirs, without seeing their pretentious poses, _that
I have made an end of them_.... I cannot endure a certain way they
have of casting their eyes heavenwards.--Fortunately for Christianity,
books are for the greatest number, merely literature. We must not let
ourselves be led away: "judge not!" they say, but they dispatch all
those to hell who stand in their way. Inasmuch as they let God do the
judging, they themselves, judge; inasmuch as they glorify God, they
glorify themselves; inasmuch as they exact those virtues of which
they themselves happen to be capable--nay more, of which they are in
need in order to be able to remain on top at all;--they assume the
grand airs of struggling for virtue, of struggling for the dominion of
virtue. "We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good" (--"the
Truth," "the Light," "the Kingdom of God"): as a matter of fact they
do only what they cannot help doing. Like sneaks they have to play a
humble part; sit away in corners, and remain obscurely in the shade,
and they make all this appear a duty; their humble life now appears as
a duty, and their humility is one proof the more of their piety!...
Oh, what a humble, chaste and compassionate kind of falsity! "Virtue
itself shall bear us testimony." ... Only read the gospels as books
calculated to seduce by means of morality: morality is appropriated by
these petty people,--they know what morality can do! The best way of
leading mankind by the nose is with morality! The fact is that the most
conscious _conceit_ of people who believe themselves to be _chosen,_
here simulates modesty: in this way they, the Christian community, the
"good and the just" place themselves once and for all on a certain
side, the side "of Truth"--and the rest of mankind, "the world" on
the other.... This was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had
ever yet existed on earth: insignificant little abortions of bigots
and liars began to lay sole claim to the concepts "God," "Truth,"
"Light," "Spirit," "Love," "Wisdom," "Life," as if these things were,
so to speak, synonyms of themselves, in order to fence themselves off
from "the world"; little ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse,
twisted values round in order to suit themselves, just as if the
Christian, alone, were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the
"_ultimate tribunal_" of all the rest of mankind.... The whole fatality
was rendered possible only because a kind of megalomania, akin to this
one and allied to it in race,--the Jewish kind--was already to hand in
the world: the very moment the gulf between Jews and Judo-Christians
was opened, the latter had no alternative left, but to adopt the same
self-preservative measures as the Jewish instinct suggested, even
_against_ the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews, theretofore, had
employed these same measures only against the Gentiles. The Christian
is nothing more than an anarchical Jew.
45
--Let me give you a few examples of what these paltry people have
stuffed into their heads, what they have laid _on the lips of their
Master_: quite a host of confessions from "beautiful souls."--
"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart
thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against
them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom
and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." (Mark vi.
11.)--_How evangelical!..._
"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in
me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and he were cast into the sea." (Mark ix. 42.)--How _evangelical!..._
"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it fa better for thee to
enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be
cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched." (Mark ix. 47, 48.)--The eye is not precisely what is meant
in this passage....
"Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here,
which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God
come with power." (Mark ix. 1.)--Well _lied,_ lion![6] ...
"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross, and follow me. _For_ ..." (_A psychologist's comment._ Christian
morality is refuted by its "For's": its "reasons" refute,--this is
Christian.) (Mark viii. 34.)
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge,
ye shall be judged." (Matthew vii. I, 2.)--What a strange notion of
justice on the part of a "just" judge!...
"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even
the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye
more _than others?_ do not even the publicans so?" (Matthew v. 46, 47.)
The principle of "Christian love": it insists upon being _well paid_....
"But if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses." (Matthew vi. 15.)--Very compromising for the
"Father" in question.
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew vi. 33)--"All these
things"--that is to say, food, clothing, all the necessities of life.
To use a moderate expression, this is an _error ..._. Shortly before
this God appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases....
"Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward
_is_ great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto
the prophets." (Luke vi. 23.)--_Impudent_ rabble! They dare to compare
themselves with the prophets....
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and _that_ the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, _him shall God
destroy;_ for the temple of God is holy, which _temple ye are._" (St
Paul, I Corinthians iii. 16, 17.)--One cannot have too much contempt
for this sort of thing....
"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world
shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?"
(St Paul, I Corinthians vi. 2.)--Unfortunately this is not merely the
speech of a lunatic.... This _appalling impostor_ proceeds thus: "Know
ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to
this life?"
"Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in
the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe ... not many
wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble _are called;_
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things
which are despised, hath God chosen; _yea,_ and things which are not,
to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in
his presence." (St Paul, I Corinthians i. 20 _et seq._)--In order to
_understand_ this passage, which is of the highest importance as an
example of the psychology of every Chandala morality, the reader should
refer to my _Genealogy of Morals:_ in this book, the contrast between
a _noble_ and a Chandala morality born of _resentment_ and impotent
revengefulness, is brought to light for the first time. St Paul was the
greatest of all the apostles of revenge....
46
_What follows from this?_ That one does well to put on one's gloves
when reading the New Testament The proximity of so much pitch almost
defiles one. We should feel just as little inclined to hobnob with
"the first Christians" as with Polish Jews: not that we need explain
our objections.... They simply smell bad.--In vain have I sought for a
single sympathetic feature in the New Testament; there is not a trace
of freedom, kindliness, open-heartedness and honesty to be found in
it. Humaneness has not even made a start in this book, while _cleanly_
instincts are entirely absent from it.... Only evil instincts are to be
found in the New Testament, it shows no sign of courage, these people
lack even the courage of their evil instincts. All is cowardice, all is
a closing of one's eyes and self-deception. Every book becomes clean,
after one has just read the New Testament: for instance, immediately
after laying down St Paul, I read with particular delight that most
charming and most wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom someone might
say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote to the Duke of Parma about Csar
Borgia: "_ tutto festo_"--immortally healthy, immortally cheerful
and well-constituted. ... These petty bigots err in their calculations
and in the most important thing of all. They certainly attack; but
everything they assail is, by that very fact alone, _distinguished._
He whom a "primitive Christian" attacks, is _not_ thereby sullied....
Conversely it is an honour to be opposed by "primitive Christians."
One cannot read the New Testament without feeling a preference for
everything in it which is the subject of abuse--not to speak of the
"wisdom of this world," which an impudent windbag tries in vain to
confound "by the foolishness of preaching." Even the Pharisees and the
Scribes derive advantage from such opposition: they must certainly
have been worth something in order to have been hated in such a
disreputable way. Hypocrisy--as if this were a reproach which the
"first Christians" _were at liberty_ to make!--After all the Scribes
and Pharisees were the _privileged ones;_ this was quite enough, the
hatred of the Chandala requires no other reasons. I very much fear
that the "first Christian"--as also the "_last Christian" whom I may
yet be able to meet,--_ is in his deepest instincts a rebel against
everything privileged; he lives and struggles unremittingly for "equal
rights"!... Regarded more closely, he has no alternative.... If one's
desire be personally to represent "one of the chosen of God"--or a
"temple of God," or "a judge of angels,"--then every _other_ principle
of selection, for instance that based upon a standard of honesty,
intellect, manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of heart,
becomes the "world,"--_evil in itself._ Moral: every word on the lips
of a "first Christian" is a lie, every action he does is an instinctive
falsehood,--all his values, all his aims are pernicious; but the man
he, hates, _the thing_ he hates, _has value._ ... The Christian, more
particularly the Christian priest, is a _criterion of values_--Do I
require to add that in the whole of the New Testament only _one_ figure
appears which we cannot help respecting? Pilate, the Roman Governor. To
take a Jewish quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself
to do. One Jew more or less--what did it matter?... The noble scorn
of a Roman, in whose presence the word "truth" had been shamelessly
abused, has enriched the New Testament with the only saying which _is
of value,_--and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the
shattering of that Testament: "What is truth!"...
47
--That which separates us from other people is not the fact that
we can discover no God, either in history, or in nature, or behind
nature,--but that we regard what has been revered as "God," not as
"divine," but as wretched, absurd, pernicious; not as an error, but as
a _crime against life._ ... We deny God as God.... If the existence
of this Christian God were _proved_ to us, we should feel even less
able to believe in him.--In a formula: _deus qualem Paulus creavit,
dei negatio._--A religion such as Christianity which never once comes
in touch with reality, and which collapses the very moment reality
asserts its rights even on one single point, must naturally be a mortal
enemy of the "wisdom of this world"--that is to say, _science._ It
will call all those means good with which mental discipline, lucidity
and severity in intellectual matters, nobility and freedom of the
intellect may be poisoned, calumniated and _decried_. "Faith" as an
imperative is a _veto_ against science,--_in praxi,_ it means lies
at any price. St Paul _understood_ that falsehood--that "faith" was
necessary; subsequently the Church understood St Paul.--That "God"
which St Paul invented for himself, a God who "confounds" the "wisdom
of this world" (in a narrower sense, the two great opponents of all
superstition, philology and medicine), means, in very truth, simply St
Paul's firm _resolve_ to do so: to call his own will "God", _thora,_
that is arch-Jewish. St Paul insists upon confounding the "wisdom of
this world": his enemies are the _good old_ philologists and doctors of
the Alexandrine schools; it is on them that he wages war. As a matter
of fact no one is either a philologist or a doctor, who is not also an
_Antichrist._ As a philologist, for instance, a man sees _behind_ the
"holy books," as a doctor he sees _behind_ the physiological rottenness
of the typical Christian. The doctor says "incurable," the philologist
says "forgery."
48
--Has anybody ever really understood the celebrated story which stands
at the beginning of the Bible,--concerning God's deadly panic over
_science?_ ... Nobody has understood it This essentially sacerdotal
book naturally begins with the great inner difficulty of the priest:
_he_ knows only one great danger, _consequently_ "God" has only one
great danger.--
The old God, entirely "spirit," a high-priest through and through, and
wholly perfect, is wandering in a leisurely fashion round his garden;
but he is bored. Against boredom even the gods themselves struggle in
vain.[7] What does he do? He invents man,--man is entertaining.... But,
behold, even man begins to be bored. God's compassion for the only
form of misery which is peculiar to all paradises, exceeds all bounds:
so forthwith he creates yet other animals. God's _first_ mistake: man
did not think animals entertaining,--he dominated them, he did not even
wish to be an "animal." Consequently God created woman. And boredom did
indeed cease from that moment,--but many other things ceased as well!
Woman was God's _second_ mistake.--"Woman in her innermost nature is a
serpent, Heva"--every priest knows this: "all evil came into this world
through woman,"--every priest knows this too. "_Consequently science_
also comes from woman." ... Only through woman did man learn to taste
of the tree of knowledge.--What had happened? Panic had seized the
old God Man himself had been his _greatest_ mistake, he had created
a rival for himself, science makes you _equal to God,_--it is all up
with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!--Moral: science is
the most prohibited thing of all,--it alone, is forbidden. Science is
the _first,_ the germ of all sins, the original sin. _This alone is
morality._--"Thou shalt _not_ know":--the rest follows as a matter of
course, God's panic did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can
one _guard_ against science? For ages this was his principal problem.
Reply: man must be kicked out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to
thinking,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _must_ not think.--And
the "priest-per-se" proceeds to invent distress, death, the vital
danger of pregnancy, every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction,
and above all _disease,_--all these are but weapons employed in the
struggle with science! Trouble prevents man from thinking.... And
notwithstanding all these precautions! Oh, horror! the work of science
towers aloft, it storms heaven itself, it rings the death-knell of the
gods,--what's to be done?--The old God invents _war;_ he separates the
nations, and contrives to make men destroy each other mutually (--the
priests have always been in need of war....) War, among other things,
is a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, _the rejection
of the sacerdotal yoke,_ nevertheless increases.--So the old God
arrives at this final decision: "Man has become scientific,--_there is
no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ...
49
You have understood me The beginning of the Bible contains the whole
psychology of the priest--The priest knows only one great danger, and
that is science,--the healthy concept of cause and effect But, on the
whole, science flourishes onlyunder happy conditions,--a man must
have time, he must also have superfluous mental energy in order to
"pursue knowledge" ... "_Consequently_ man must be made unhappy,"--this
has been the argument of the priest of all ages.--You have already
divined what, in accordance with such a manner of arguing, must
first have come into the world:--"sin." ... The notion of guilt and
punishment, the whole "moral order of the universe," was invented
against science,--against the deliverance of man from the priest....
Man must _not_ cast his glance upon the outer world, he must turn it
inwards into himself; he must not as a learner look cleverly and
cautiously _into_ things; he must not see at all: he must _suffer._
... And he must suffer, so that he may be in need of the priest every
minute.--Away with doctors! What is needed is a Saviour!--The notion of
guilt and punishment, including the doctrine of "grace," of "salvation"
and of "forgiveness"--all _lies_ through and through without a shred
of psychological reality--were invented in order to destroy man's
_sense of causality:_ they are an attack on the concept of cause and
effect!--And _not_ an attack with the fist, with the knife, with
honesty in hate and love! But one actuated by the most cowardly, most
crafty, and most ignoble instincts! A _priests_ attack! A _parasite's_
attack! A vampyrism of pale subterranean leeches!--... When the natural
consequences of an act are no longer "natural," but are thought to
be conjured up by phantom concepts of superstition, by "God," by
"spirits," and by "souls," as merely moral consequences, in the form
of rewards, punishments, hints, and educational means,--then the whole
basis of knowledge is destroyed,--_then the greatest crime against man
has been perpetrated._--Sin, I repeat, this form of self-pollution _par
excellence_ on the part of man, was invented in order to make science,
culture and every elevation and noble trait in man quite impossible; by
means of the invention of sin the priest is able to _rule._
50
--I cannot here dispense with a psychology of "faith" and of the
"faithful," which will naturally be to the advantage of the "faithful."
If to-day there are still many who do not know how very _indecent_ it
is to be a "believer"--_or_ to what extent such a state is the sign
of decadence, and of the broken will to Life,--they will know it no
later than to-morrow. My voice can make even those hear who are hard
of hearing.--If perchance my ears have not deceived me, it seems that
among Christians there is such a thing as a kind of criterion of truth,
which is called "the proof of power." "Faith saveth; _therefore_ it
is true."--It might be objected here that it is precisely salvation
which is not proved but only _promised:_ salvation is bound up with
the condition "faith,"--one _shall_ be saved, _because_ one has
faith.... But how prove _that_ that which the priest promises to the
faithful really will take place, to wit: the "Beyond" which defies
all demonstration?--The assumed "proof of power" is at bottom once
again only a belief in the fact that the effect which faith promises
will not fail to take place. In a formula: "I believe that faith
saveth;--_consequently_ it is true."--But with this we are at the end
of our tether. This "consequently" would be the _absurdum_ itself as
a criterion of truth.--Let us be indulgent enough to assume, however,
that salvation is proved by faith (--_not_ only desired, and _not_
merely promised by the somewhat suspicious lips of a priest): could
salvation--or, in technical terminology, _happiness_--ever be a proof
of truth? So little is it so that, when pleasurable sensations make
their influence felt in replying to the question "what is true," they
furnish almost the contradiction of truth, or at any rate they make
it in the highest degree suspicious. The proof through "happiness,"
is a proof of happiness--and nothing else; why in the world should
we take it for granted that _true_ judgments cause more pleasure than
false ones, and that in accordance with a pre-established harmony, they
necessarily bring pleasant feelings in their wake?--The experience of
all strict and profound minds teaches the _reverse._ Every inch of
truth has been conquered only after a struggle, almost everything to
which our heart, our love and our trust in life cleaves, has had to be
sacrificed for it Greatness of soul is necessary for this: the service
of truth is the hardest of all services.--What then is meant by honesty
in things intellectual? It means that a man is severe towards his own
heart, that he scorns "beautiful feelings," and that he makes a matter
of conscience out of every Yea and Nay!---Faith saveth: _consequently_
it lies....
51
The fact that faith may in certain circumstances save, the fact that
salvation as the result of an _ide fixe_ does not constitute a true
idea, the fact that faith moves _no_ mountains, but may very readily
raise them where previously they did not exist--all these things are
made sufficiently clear by a mere casual stroll through a _lunatic
asylum._ Of course _no_ priest would find this sufficient: for he
instinctively denies that illness is illness or that lunatic asylums
are lunatic asylums. Christianity is in _need_ of illness, just as
Ancient Greece was in need of a superabundance of health. The actual
ulterior motive of the whole of the Church's system of salvation
is to _make people ill._ And is not the Church itself the Catholic
madhouse as an ultimate ideal?--The earth as a whole converted into a
madhouse?--The kind of religious man which the Church aims at producing
is a typical _decadent_ The moment of time at which a religious crisis
attains the ascendancy over a people, is always characterised by
nerve-epidemics; the "inner world" of the religious man is ridiculously
like the "inner world" of over-irritable and exhausted people; the
"highest" states which Christianity holds up to mankind as the value
of values, are epileptic in character,--the Church has pronounced only
madmen _or_ great swindlers _in majorem dei honorem_ holy. Once I
ventured to characterise the whole of the Christian training of penance
and salvation (which nowadays is best studied in England) as a _folie
circulaire_ methodically generated upon a soil which, of course, is
already prepared for it,--that is to say, which is thoroughly morbid.
Not every one who likes can be a Christian: no man is "converted"
to Christianity,--he must be sick enough for it ... We others who
possess enough courage both for health and for contempt, how rightly
_we_ may despise a religion which taught men to misunderstand the
body I which would not rid itself of the superstitions of the soul!
which made a virtue of taking inadequate nourishment! which in health
combats a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! which persuaded itself that
it was possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous body,
and which, to this end, had to make up for itself a new concept of
"perfection," a pale, sickly, idiotically gushing ideal,--so-called
"holiness,"--holiness, which in itself is simply a symptom of an
impoverished, enervated and incurably deteriorated body!... The
movement of Christianity, as a European movement, was from first to
last, a general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all sorts and
kinds (--and these, by means of Christianity, aspire to power). It
does _not_ express the downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate
assembly of all the decadent elements from everywhere which seek each
other and crowd together. It was not, as some believe, the corruption
of antiquity, of _noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible:
the learned idiocy which nowadays tries to support such a notion cannot
be too severely contradicted. At the time when the morbid and corrupted
Chandala classes became Christianised in the whole of the _imperium,_
the very _contrary type,_ nobility, was extant in its finest and
maturest forms. The greatest number became master; the democracy of
Christian instincts triumphed.... Christianity was not "national," it
was not determined by race,--it appealed to all the disinherited forms
of life, it had its allies everywhere. Christianity is built upon the
rancour of the sick; its instinct is directed _against_ the sound,
against health. Everything well-constituted, proud, high-spirited,
and beautiful is offensive to its ears and eyes. Again I remind you
of St Paul's priceless words: "And God hath chosen the _weak_ things
of the world, the _foolish_ things of the world; and _base_ things of
the world, and things which are _despised"_: this was the formula, _in
hoc signo_ decadence triumphed.--_God on the Cross_--does no one yet
understand the terrible ulterior motive of this symbol?--Everything
that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is _divine...._ All
of us hang on the cross, consequently we are _divine ..._. We alone are
divine.... Christianity was a victory; a _nobler_ type of character
perished through it,--Christianity has been humanity's greatest
misfortune hitherto.----
52
Christianity also stands opposed to everything happily constituted
in the _mind,_--it can make use only of morbid reason as Christian
reason; it takes the side of everything idiotic, it utters a curse
upon "intellect," upon the _superbia_ of the healthy intellect. Since
illness belongs to the essence of Christianity, the typically Christian
state, "faith," _must_ also be a form of illness, and all straight,
honest and scientific roads to knowledge must be repudiated by the
Church as forbidden.... Doubt in itself is already a sin.... The total
lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest, which reveals itself
in his look, is a _result_ of decadence. Hysterical women, as also
children with scrofulous constitutions, should be observed as a proof
of how invariably instinctive falsity, the love of lying for the sake
of lying, and the in ability either to look or to walk straight, are
the expression of decadence. "Faith" simply means the refusal to know
what is true. The pious person, the priest of both sexes, is false
because he is ill: his instinct _demands_ that truth should not assert
its right anywhere. "That which makes ill is good: that which proceeds
from abundance, from superabundance and from power, is evil": that
is the view of the faithful. The _constraint to lie_--that is the
sign by which I recognise every predetermined theologian.--Another
characteristic of the theologian is his lack of _capacity_ for
_philology._ What I mean here by the word philology is, in a general
sense to be understood as the art of reading well, of being able to
take account of facts _without_ falsifying them by interpretation,
without losing either caution, patience or subtlety owing to one's
desire to understand. Philology as _ephexis_[8] in interpretation,
whether one be dealing with books, newspaper reports, human destinies
or meteorological records,--not to speak of the "salvation of the
soul." ... The manner in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in
Rome, interprets a verse from the "Scriptures," or an experience, or
the triumph of his nation's army for instance, under the superior
guiding light of David's Psalms, is always so exceedingly _daring,_
that it is enough to make a philologist's hair stand on end. And what
is he to do, when pietists and other cows from Swabia explain their
miserable every-day lives in their smoky hovels by means of the "Finger
of God," a miracle of "grace," of "Providence," of experiences of
"salvation"! The most modest effort of the intellect, not to speak of
decent feeling, ought at least to lead these interpreters to convince
themselves of the absolute childishness and unworthiness of any such
abuse of the dexterity of God's fingers. However small an amount of
loving piety we might possess, a god who cured us in time of a cold in
the nose, or who arranged for us to enter a carriage just at the moment
when a cloud burst over our heads, would be such an absurd God, that he
would have to be abolished, even if he existed.[9] God as a domestic
servant, as a postman, as a general provider,--in short, merely a word
for the most foolish kind of accidents.... "Divine Providence," as it
is believed in to-day by almost every third man in "cultured Germany,"
would be an argument against God, in fact it would be the strongest
argument against God that could be Imagined. And in any case it is an
argument against the Germans.
53
--The notion that martyrs prove anything at all in favour of a thing,
is so exceedingly doubtful, that I would fain deny that there has ever
yet existed a martyr who had anything to do with truth. In the very
manner in which a martyr flings his little parcel of truth at the
head of the world, such a low degree of intellectual honesty and such
obtuseness in regard to the question "truth" makes itself felt, that
one never requires to refute a martyr. Truth is not a thing which one
might have and another be without: only peasants or peasant-apostles,
after the style of Luther, can think like this about truth. You may be
quite sure, that the greater a man's degree of conscientiousness may
be in matters intellectual, the more modest he will show himself on
this point To _know_ about five things, and with a subtle wave of the
hand to refuse to know _others._ ... "Truth" as it is understood by
every prophet, every sectarian, every free thinker, every socialist and
every church-man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people
haven't even begun that discipline of the mind and that process of
self-mastery, which is necessary for the discovery of any small, even
exceedingly small truth.--Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have
been a great misfortune in the history of the world: they led people
astray.... The conclusion which all idiots, women and common people
come to, that there must be something in a cause for which someone lays
down his life (or which, as in the case of primitive Christianity,
provokes an epidemic of sacrifices),--this conclusion put a tremendous
check upon all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and of
caution. Martyrs have _harmed_ the cause of truth. ... Even to this day
it only requires the crude fact of persecution, in order to create an
honourable name for any obscure sect who does not matter in the least
What? is a cause actually changed in any way by the fact that some
one has laid down his life for it? An error which becomes honourable,
is simply an error that possesses one seductive charm the more: do
you suppose, dear theologians, that we shall give you the chance of
acting the martyrs for your lies?--A thing is refuted by being laid
respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in the same way. This
was precisely the world-historic foolishness of all persecutors; they
lent the thing they combated a semblance of honour by conferring the
fascination of martyrdom upon it.... Women still lie prostrate before
an error to-day, because they have been told that some one died on the
cross for it _Is the cross then an argument?_--But concerning all these
things, one person alone has said what mankind has been in need of for
thousands of years,--_Zarathustra._
"Letters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly
taught that truth is proved by blood.
"But blood is the very worst testimony of truth; blood poisoneth even
the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds.
"And when a man goeth through fire for his teaching--what does that
prove? Verily, it is more when out of one's own burning springeth one's
own teaching."[10]
54
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: great minds are sceptical.
Zarathustra is a sceptic. Strength and the _freedom_ which proceeds
from the power and excessive power of the mind, _manifests_ itself
through scepticism. Men of conviction are of no account whatever
in regard to any principles of value or of non-value. Convictions
are prisons. They never see far enough, they do not look down from
a sufficient height: but in order to have any say in questions of
value and non-value, a man must see five hundred convictions _beneath_
him,--_behind_ him.... A spirit who desires great things, and who also
desires the means thereto, is necessarily a sceptic. Freedom from every
kind of conviction _belongs_ to strength, to the _ability_ to open
one's eyes freely.... The great passion of a sceptic, the basis and
power of his being, which is more enlightened and more despotic than he
is himself, enlists all his intellect into its service; it makes him
unscrupulous; it even gives him the courage to employ unholy means;
in certain circumstances it even allows him convictions. Conviction
as a _means:_ much is achieved merely by means of a conviction. Great
passion makes use of and consumes convictions, it does not submit to
them--it knows that it is a sovereign power. Conversely; the need of
faith, of anything either absolutely affirmative or negative, Carlylism
(if I may be allowed this expression), is the need of _weakness._
The man of beliefs, the "believer" of every sort and condition, is
necessarily a dependent man;--he is one who cannot regard _himself_ as
an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the promptings of his own heart
The "believer" does not belong to himself, he can be only a means,
he must be _used up,_ he is in need of someone who uses him up. His
instinct accords the highest honour to a morality of self-abnegation:
everything in him, his prudence, his experience, his vanity, persuade
him to adopt this morality. Every sort of belief is in itself an
expression of self-denial, of self-estrangement. ... If one considers
how necessary a regulating code of conduct is to the majority of
people, a code of conduct which constrains them and fixes them from
outside; and how control, or in a higher sense, _slavery,_ is the only
and ultimate condition under which the weak-willed man, and especially
woman, flourish; one also understands conviction, "faith." The man
of conviction finds in the latter his _backbone._ To be _blind_ to
many things, to be impartial about nothing, to belong always to a
particular side, to hold a strict and necessary point of view in all
matters of values--these are the only conditions under which such a man
can survive at all. But all this is the reverse of, the _antagonist_
of, the truthful man,--of truth.... The believer is not at liberty to
have a conscience for the question "true" and "untrue": to be upright
on _this_ point would mean his immediate downfall. The pathological
limitations of his standpoint convert the convinced man into the
fanatic--Savonarola, Luther Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon,--these
are the reverse type of the strong spirit that has become _free._ But
the grandiose poses of these _morbid_ spirits, of these epileptics
of ideas, exercise an influence over the masses,--fanatics are
picturesque, mankind prefers to look at poses than to listen to reason.
55
One step further in the psychology of conviction of "faith." It
is already some time since I first thought of considering whether
convictions were not perhaps more dangerous enemies of truth than lies
("Human All-too-Human," Part I, Aphs. 54 and 483). Now I would fain put
the decisive question: is there any difference at all between a lie
and a conviction?--All the world believes that there is, but what in
Heaven's name does not all the world believe! Every conviction has its
history, its preliminary stages, its period of groping and of mistakes:
it becomes a conviction only after it has _not_ been one for a long
time, only after it has _scarcely_ been one for a long time. What?
might not falsehood be the embryonic form of conviction?--At times
all that is required is a change of personality: very often what was
a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.--I call a lie,
to refuse to see something that one sees, to refuse to see it exactly
_as_ one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated before witnesses or not
is beside the point.--The most common sort of lie is the one uttered
to one's self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now this
refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see a thing exactly as
one sees it, is almost the first condition for all those who belong
to a _party_ in any sense whatsoever: the man who belongs to a party
perforce becomes a liar. German historians, for instance, are convinced
that Rome stood for despotism, whereas the Teutons introduced the
spirit of freedom into the world: what difference is there between
this conviction and a lie? After this is it to be wondered at, that
all parties, including German historians, instinctively adopt the
grandiloquent phraseology of morality,--that morality almost owes
its _survival_ to the fact that the man who belongs to a party, no
matter what it may be, is in need of morality every moment?--"This
is our conviction: we confess it to the whole world, we live and die
for it,--let us respect every thing that has a conviction!"--I have
actually heard antisemites speak in this way. On the contrary, my dear
sirs! An antisemite does not become the least bit more respectable
because he lies on principle.... Priests, who in such matters are
more subtle, and who perfectly understand the objection to which the
idea of a conviction lies open--that is to say of a falsehood which
is perpetrated on principle _because_ it serves a purpose, borrowed
from the Jews the prudent measure of setting the concept "God," "Will
of God," "Revelation of God," at this place. Kant, too, with his
categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his _practical_
reason.--There are some questions in which it is _not_ given to man
to decide between true and false; all the principal questions, all
the principal problems of value, stand beyond human reason.... To
comprehend the limits of reason--this alone is genuine philosophy. For
what purpose did God give man revelation? Would God have done anything
superfluous? Man cannot of his own accord know what is good and what is
evil, that is why God taught man his will.... Moral: the priest does
_not_ lie, such questions as "truth" or "falseness" have nothing to do
with the things concerning which the priest speaks; such things do not
allow of lying. For, in order to lie, it would be necessary to know
_what_ is true in this respect. But that is precisely what man cannot
know: hence the priest is only the mouthpiece of God.--This sort of
sacerdotal syllogism is by no means exclusively Judaic or Christian;
the right to lie and the _prudent measure_ of "revelation" belongs
to the priestly type, whether of decadent periods or of Pagan times
(--Pagans are all those who say yea to life, and to whom "God" is the
word for the great yea to all things). The "law," the "will of God,"
the "holy book," and inspiration.--All these things are merely words
for the conditions under which the priest attains to power, and with
which he maintains his power,--these concepts are to be found at the
base of all sacerdotal organisations, of all priestly or philosophical
and ecclesiastical governments. The "holy lie," which is common to
Confucius, to the law-book of Manu, to Muhamed, and to the Christian
church, is not even absent in Plato. "Truth is here"; this phrase
means, wherever it is uttered: _the priest lies...._
56
After all, the question is, to what _end_ are falsehoods perpetrated?
The fact that, in Christianity, "holy" ends are entirely absent,
constitutes _my_ objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only
_bad_ ends: the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of life,
the contempt of the body, the degradation and self-pollution of man by
virtue of the concept sin,--consequently its means are bad as well.--My
feelings are quite the reverse when I read the law-book of _Manu, an_
incomparably superior and more intellectual work, which it would be
a sin against the _spirit_ even to _mention_ in the same breath with
the Bible. You will guess immediately why: it has a genuine philosophy
behind it, _in_ it, not merely an evil-smelling Jewish distillation
of Rabbinism and superstition,--it gives something to chew even
to the most fastidious psychologist. And, _not_ to forget the most
important point of all, it is fundamentally different from every kind
of Bible: by means of it the _noble classes,_ the philosophers and the
warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values,
it is filled with a feeling of perfection, with a saying of yea to
life, and a triumphant sense of well-being in regard to itself and to
life,--the sun shines upon the whole book.--All those things which
Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity: procreation,
woman, marriage, are here treated with earnestness, with revere nee,
with love and confidence. How can one possibly place in the hands of
children and women, a book that contains those vile words: "to avoid
fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman
have her own husb and ... it is better to marry than to burn."[11]
And is it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origin of
man is Christianised,--that is to say, befouled, by the idea of the
_immaculata conceptio?_ ... I know of no book in which so many delicate
and kindly things are said to woman, as in the Law-Rook of Manu; these
old grey-beards and saints have a manner of being gallant to women
which, perhaps, cannot be surpassed. "The mouth of a woman," says Manu
on one occasion, "the breast of a maiden, the prayer of a child, and
the smoke of the sacrifice, are always pure." Elsewhere he says: "there
is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow,
air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden." And finally--perhaps this
is also a holy lie:--"all the openings of the body above the navel are
pure, all those below the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is the
whole body pure."
57
The unholiness of Christian means is caught _in flagranti,_ if only
the end aspired to by Christianity be compared with that of the
Law-Book of Manu; if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under
a strong light The critic of Christianity simply cannot avoid making
Christianity _contemptible._--A Law-Book like that of Manu comes into
being like every good law-book: it epitomises the experience, the
precautionary measures, and the experimental morality of long ages,
it settles things definitely, it no longer creates. The prerequisite
for a codification of this kind, is the recognition of the fact that
the means which procure authority for a _truth_ to which it has cost
both time and great pains to attain, are fundamentally different from
those with which that same truth would be proved. A law-book never
relates the utility, the reasons, the preliminary casuistry, of a
law: for it would be precisely in this way that it would forfeit its
imperative tone, the "thou shalt," the first condition of its being
obeyed. The problem lies exactly in this.--At a certain stage in the
development of a people, the most far-seeing class within it (that is
to say, the class that sees farthest backwards and forwards), declares
the experience of how its fellow-creatures ought to live--_can_
live--to be finally settled. Its object is, to reap as rich and as
complete a harvest as possible, in return for the ages of experiment
and _terrible_ experience it has traversed. Consequently, that which
has to be avoided, above all, is any further experimentation, the
continuation of the state when values are still fluid, the testing,
choosing, and criticising of values _in infinitum. _ Against all this a
double wall is built up: in the first place, _Revelation,_ which is the
assumption that the rationale of every law is not human in its origin,
that it was not sought and found after ages of error, but that it is
divine in its origin, completely and utterly without a history, gift, a
miracle, a mere communication.... And secondly, _tradition,_ which is
the assumption that the law has obtained since the most primeval times,
that it is impious and a crime against one's ancestors to attempt to
doubt it. The authority of law is established on the principles: God
_gave_ it, the ancestors _lived_ it.--The superior reason of such a
procedure lies in the intention to draw consciousness off step by step
from that mode of life which has been recognised as correct (_i.e.,
proved_ after enormous and carefully examined experience), so that
perfect automatism of the instincts may be attained,--this being the
only possible basis of all mastery of every kind of perfection in
the Art of Life. To draw up a law-book like Manu's, is tantamount
to granting a people mastership for the future, perfection for the
future,--the right to aspire to the highest Art of Life. _To that
end it must be made unconscious;_ this is the object of every holy
lie.--_The order of castes,_ the highest, the dominating law, is only
the sanction of a _natural order,_ of a natural legislation of the
first rank, over which no arbitrary innovation, no "modern idea" has
any power. Every healthy society falls into three distinct types, which
reciprocally condition one another and which gravitate differently in
the physiological sense; and each of these has its own hygiene, its
own sphere of work, its own special feeling of perfection, and its
own mastership. It is Nature, not Manu, that separates from the rest,
those individuals preponderating in intellectual power, those excelling
in muscular strength and temperament, and the third class which is
distinguished neither in one way nor the other, the mediocre,--the
latter as the greatest number, the former as the _lite._ The superior
caste--I call them the _fewest,_--has, as the perfect caste, the
privileges of the fewest: it devolves upon them to represent happiness,
beauty and goodness on earth. Only the most intellectual men have
the right to beauty, to the beautiful: only in them is goodness not
weakness. _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum:_ goodness is a privilege.
On the other hand there is nothing which they should be more strictly
forbidden than repulsive manners or a pessimistic look, a look that
makes everything _seem ugly,_--or even indignation at the general
aspect of things. Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala, and so
is pessimism. "_The world is perfect_"--that is what the instinct of
the most intellectual says, the yea-saying instinct; "imperfection,
every kind of _inferiority_ to us, distance, the pathos of distance,
even the Chandala belongs to this perfection." The most intellectual
men, as the _strongest_ find their happiness where others meet
with their ruin: in the labyrinth, in hardness towards themselves
and others, in endeavour; their delight is self-mastery: with them
asceticism becomes a second nature, a need, an instinct They regard
a difficult task as their privilege; to play with burdens which crush
their fellows is to them a _recreation...._ Knowledge, a form of
asceticism.--They are the most honourable kind of men: but that does
not prevent them from being the most cheerful and most gracious. They
rule, not because they will, but because they _are;_ they are not at
liberty to take a second place.--The second in rank are the guardians
of the law, the custodians of order and of security, the noble
warriors, the king, above all, as the highest formula of the warrior,
the judge, and keeper of the law. The second in rank are the executive
of the most intellectual, the nearest to them in duty, relieving them
of all that is _coarse_ in the work of ruling,--their retinue, their
right hand, their best disciples. In all this, I repeat, there is
nothing arbitrary, nothing "artificial," that which is _otherwise_ is
artificial,--by that which is otherwise, nature is put to shame.... The
order of castes, and the order of rank merely formulates the supreme
law of life itself; the differentiation of the three types is necessary
for the maintenance of society, and for enabling higher and highest
types to be reared,--the _inequality_ of rights is the only condition
of there being rights at all.--A right is a privilege. And in his
way, each has his privilege. Let us not underestimate the privileges
of the _mediocre._ Life always gets harder towards the summit,--the
cold increases, responsibility increases. A high civilisation is a
pyramid: it can stand only upon a broad base, its first prerequisite is
a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. Handicraft, commerce,
agriculture, science, the greater part of art,--in a word, the whole
range of professional and business callings, is compatible only with
mediocre ability and ambition; such pursuits would be out of place
among exceptions, the instinct pertaining thereto would oppose not
only aristocracy but anarchy as well. The fact that one is publicly
useful, a wheel, a function, presupposes a certain natural destiny: it
is not _society,_ but the only kind of _happiness_ of which the great
majority are capable, that makes them intelligent machines. For the
mediocre it is a joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing, a
speciality, is a natural instinct. It would be absolutely unworthy of
a profound thinker to see any objection in mediocrity _per se._ For
in itself it is the first essential condition under which exceptions
are possible; a high culture is determined by it. When the exceptional
man treats the mediocre with more tender care than he does himself or
his equals, this is not mere courtesy of heart on his part--but simply
his _duty._ ... Whom do I hate most among the rabble of the present
day? The socialistic rabble, the Chandala apostles, who undermine the
working man's instinct, his happiness and his feeling of contentedness
with his insignificant existence,--who make him envious, and who teach
him revenge. ... The wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the
claim to equal rights. What is _bad?_ But I have already replied to
this: Everything that proceeds from weakness, envy and _revenge._--The
anarchist and the Christian are offspring of the same womb....
58
In point of fact, it matters greatly to what end one lies: whether one
preserves or _destroys_ by means of falsehood. It is quite justifiable
to bracket the _Christian_ and the _Anarchist_ together: their object,
their instinct, is concerned only with destruction. The proof of this
proposition can be read quite plainly from history: history spells it
with appalling distinctness. Whereas we have just seen a religious
legislation, whose object was to render the highest possible means of
making life _flourish,_ and of making a grand organisation of society,
eternal,--Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such an
organisation, _precisely because life flourishes through it._ In the
one case, the net profit to the credit of reason, acquired through
long ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied usefully to the
most remote ends, and the harvest, which is as large, as rich and
as complete as possible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case,
on the contrary, the harvest is _blighted_ in a single night That
which stood there, _re perennius,_ the _imperium Romanum,_ the most
magnificent form of organisation, under difficult conditions, that has
ever been achieved, and compared with which everything that preceded,
and everything which followed it, is mere patchwork, gimcrackery,
and dilettantism,--those holy anarchists made it their "piety," to
destroy "the world"--that is to say, the _imperium Romanum,_ until
no two stones were left standing one on the other,--until even the
Teutons and other clodhoppers were able to become master of it The
Christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both incapable
of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously and
witheringly, like _blood-suckers;_ they are both actuated by an
instinct of _mortal hatred_ of everything that stands erect, that is
great, that is lasting, and that is a guarantee of the future....
Christianity was the vampire of the _imperium Romanum,_--in a night
it shattered the stupendous achievement of the Romans, which was to
acquire the territory for a vast civilisation which could _bide its
time._--Does no one understand this yet? The _imperium Romanum_ that
we know, and which the history of the Roman province teaches us to
know ever more thoroughly, this most admirable work of art on a grand
scale, was the beginning, its construction was calculated _to prove_
its worth by millenniums,--unto this day nothing has ever again been
built in this fashion, nor have men even dreamt since of building on
this scale _sub specie aterni!_--This organisation was sufficiently
firm to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personalities must
have nothing to do with such matters--the _first_ principle of all
great architecture. But it was not sufficiently firm to resist the
_corruptest_ form of corruption, to resist the Christians.... These
stealthy canker-worms, which under the shadow of night, mist and
duplicity, insinuated themselves into the company of every individual,
and proceeded to drain him of all seriousness for _real_ things,
of all his instinct for _realities;_ this cowardly, effeminate and
sugary gang have step by step alienated all "souls" from this colossal
edifice,--those valuable, virile and noble natures who felt that
the cause of Rome was their own personal cause, their own personal
seriousness, their own personal _pride._ The stealth of the bigot,
the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell such as
the sacrifice of the innocent, the _unto mystica_ in the drinking
of blood, above all the slowly kindled fire of revenge, of Chandala
revenge--such things became master of Rome, the same kind of religion
on the pre-existent form of which Epicurus had waged war. One has
only to read Lucretius in order to understand what Epicurus combated,
_not_ Paganism, but "Christianity," that is to say the corruption of
souls through the concept of guilt, through the concept of punishment
and immortality. He combated the _subterranean_ cults, the whole of
latent Christianity--to deny immortality was at that time a genuine
_deliverance._--And Epicurus had triumphed, every respectable thinker
in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean: _then St Paul appeared_ ... St
Paul, the Chandala hatred against Rome, against "the world," the Jew,
the eternal Jew _par excellence,_ become flesh and genius. ... What
he divined was, how, by the help of the small sectarian Christian
movement, independent of Judaism, a universal conflagration could be
kindled; how, with the symbol of the "God on the Cross," everything
submerged, everything secretly insurrectionary, the whole offspring
of anarchical intrigues could be gathered together to constitute an
enormous power. "For salvation is of the Jews."--Christianity is
the formula for the supersession, _and_ epitomising of all kinds of
subterranean cults, that of Osiris, of the Great Mother, of Mithras for
example: St Paul's genius consisted in his discovery of this. In this
matter his instinct was so certain, that, regardless of doing violence
to truth, he laid the ideas by means of which those Chandala religions
fascinated, upon the very lips of the "Saviour" he had invented, and
not only upon his lips,--that he _made_ out of him something which even
a Mithras priest could understand.... This was his moment of Damascus:
he saw that he had _need of_ the belief in immortality in order to
depreciate "the world," that the notion of "hell" would become master
of Rome, that with a "Beyond" _this life_ can be killed. ... Nihilist
and Christian,--they rhyme in German, and they do not only rhyme.
59
The whole labour of the ancient world _in vain:_ I am at a loss for a
word which could express my feelings at something so atrocious.--And
in view of the fact that its labour was only preparatory, that with
adamantine self-consciousness it laid the substructure, alone, to
a work which was to last millenniums, the whole _significance_ of
the ancient world was certainly in vain!... What was the use of the
Greeks? what was the use of the Romans?--All the prerequisites of a
learned culture, all the scientific methods already existed, the great
and peerless art of reading well had already been established--that
indispensable condition to tradition, to culture and to scientific
unity; natural science hand in hand with mathematics and mechanics
was on the best possible road,--the sense for facts, the last and
most valuable of all senses, had its schools, and its tradition was
already centuries old! Is this understood? Everything _essential_ had
been discovered to make it possible for work to be begun:--methods,
and this cannot be said too often, are the essential thing, also the
most difficult thing, while they moreover have to wage the longest war
against custom and indolence. That which to-day we have successfully
reconquered for ourselves, by dint of unspeakable self-discipline--for
in some way or other all of us still have the bad instincts, the
Christian instincts, in our body,--the impartial eye for reality,
the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest details,
complete _uprightness_ in knowledge,--all this was already there; it
had been there over two thousand years before! And in addition to this
there was also that excellent and subtle tact and taste! _Not_ in the
form of brain drilling! _Not_ in the form of "German" culture with the
manners of a boor! But incarnate, manifesting itself in men's bearing
and in their instinct,--in short constituting reality.... _All this
in vain!_ In one night it became merely a memory!--The Greeks! The
Romans! Instinctive nobility, instinctive taste, methodic research,
the genius of organisation and administration, faith, the _will_ to
the future of mankind, the great _yea_ to all things materialised
in the _imperium Romanum,_ become visible to all the senses, grand
style no longer manifested in mere art, but in reality, in truth,
in _life._--And buried in a night, not by a natural catastrophe!
Not stamped to death by Teutons and other heavy-footed vandals!
But destroyed by crafty, stealthy, invisible anmic vampires! Not
conquered,--but only drained of blood!... The concealed lust of
revenge, miserable envy become _master!_ Everything wretched, inwardly
ailing, and full of ignoble feelings, the whole Ghetto-world of souls,
was in a trice _uppermost!_--One only needs to read any one of the
Christian agitators--St Augustine, for instance,--in order to realise,
in order to _smell,_ what filthy fellows came to the top in this
movement. You would deceive yourselves utterly if you supposed that the
leaders of the Christian agitation showed any lack of understanding
--Ah! they were shrewd, shrewd to the point of holiness were these
dear old Fathers of the Church I What they lack is something quite
different. Nature neglected them,--it forgot to give them a modest
dowry of decent, of respectable and of _cleanly_ instincts.... Between
ourselves, they are not even men. If Islam despises Christianity, it is
justified a thousand times over; for Islam presupposes men.
60
Christianity destroyed the harvest we might have reaped from the
culture of antiquity, later it also destroyed our harvest of the
culture of Islam. The wonderful Moorish world of Spanish culture, which
in its essence is more closely related to _us,_ and which appeals
more to our sense and taste than Rome and Greece, was _trampled to
death_(--I do not say by what kind of feet), why?--because it owed
its origin to noble, to manly instincts, because it said yea to life,
even that life so full of the rare and refined luxuries of the Moors!
... Later on the Crusaders waged war upon something before which it
would have been more seemly in them to grovel in the dust,--a culture,
beside which even our Nineteenth Century would seem very poor and
very "senile."--Of course they wanted booty: the Orient was rich....
For goodness' sake let us forget our prejudices! Crusades--superior
piracy, that is all! German nobility--that is to say, a Viking nobility
at bottom, was in its element in such wars: the Church was only too
well aware of how German nobility is to be won.... German nobility
was always the "Swiss Guard" of the Church, always at the service of
all the bad instincts of the Church; but it was _well paid for it
all...._ Fancy the Church having waged its deadly war upon everything
noble on earth, precisely with the help of German swords, German blood
and courage! A host of painful _questions_ might be raised on this
point German nobility scarcely takes a place in the history of higher
culture: the reason of this is obvious; Christianity, alcohol--the two
_great_ means of corruption. As a matter of fact choice ought to be
just as much out of the question between Islam and Christianity, as
between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already self-evident; nobody
is at liberty to exercise a choice in this matter. A man is either of
the Chandala or he is _not ..._ "War with Rome to the knife! Peace
and friendship with Islam": this is what that great free spirit, that
genius among German emperors,--Frederick the Second, not only felt
but also _did._ What? Must a German in the first place be a genius, a
free-spirit, in order to have _decent_ feelings? I cannot understand
how a German was ever able to have _Christian_ feelings.
Here it is necessary to revive a memory which will be a hundred times
more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed the last great
harvest of culture which was to be garnered for Europe,--it destroyed
the _Renaissance._ Does anybody at last understand, _will_ anybody
understand what the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian
values,_ the attempt undertaken with all means, all instincts and all
genius to make the _opposite_ values, the _noble_ values triumph,...
Hitherto there has been only _this_ great war: there has never yet
been a more decisive question than the Renaissance,--_my_ question
is the question of the Renaissance:--there has never been a more
fundamental, a more direct and a more severe _attack,_ delivered with
a whole front upon the centre of the foe. To attack at the decisive
quarter, at the very seat of Christianity, and there to place _noble_
values on the throne,--that is to say, to _introduce_ them into the
instincts, into the most fundamental needs and desires of those
sitting there.... I see before me a possibility perfectly magic in
its charm and glorious colouring--it seems to me to scintillate
with all the quivering grandeur of refined beauty, that there is
an art at work within it which is so divine, so infernally divine,
that one might seek through millenniums in vain for another such
possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in meaning and so wonderfully
paradoxical to boot, that it would be enough to make all the gods of
Olympus rock with immortal laughter,--_Csar Borgia as Pope._ ...
Do you understand me? ... Very well then, this would have been the
triumph which I alone am longing for to-day:--this would have _swept_
Christianity _away!_--What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to
Rome. This monk, with all the vindictive instincts of an abortive
priest in his body, foamed with rage over the Renaissance in Rome....
Instead of, with the profoundest gratitude, understanding the vast
miracle that had taken place, the overcoming of Christianity at its
_headquarters,_--the fire of his hate knew only how to draw fresh fuel
from this spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself.--Luther
saw the corruption of the Papacy when the very reverse stared him in
the face: the old corruption, the _peceatum originate,_ Christianity
_no_ longer sat upon the Papal chair! But Life! The triumph of
Life! The great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!...
And Luther reinstated the Church; he attacked it The Renaissance
thus became an event without meaning, a great _in vain!_--Ah these
Germans, what have they not cost us already! In vain--this has always
been the achievement of the Germans.--The Reformation, Leibniz,
Kant and so-called German philosophy, the Wars of Liberation, the
Empire--in each case are in vain for something which had already
existed, for something which _cannot be recovered._ ... I confess it,
these Germans are my enemies: I despise every sort of uncleanliness
in concepts and valuations in them, every kind of cowardice in the
face of every honest yea or nay. For almost one thousand years, now,
they have tangled and confused everything they have laid their hands
on; they have on their conscience all the half-measures, all the
three-eighth measures of which Europe is sick; they also have the
most unclean, the most incurable, and the most irrefutable kind of
Christianity--Protestantism--on their conscience.... If we shall never
be able to get rid of Christianity, the _Germans_ will be to blame.
62
--With this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment. I _condemn_
Christianity and confront it with the most terrible accusation that
an accuser has ever had in his mouth. To my mind it is the greatest
of all conceivable corruptions, it has had the will to the last
imaginable corruption. The Christian Church allowed nothing to escape
from its corruption; it converted every value into its opposite, every
truth into a He, and every honest impulse into an ignominy of the
soul. Let anyone dare to speak to me of its humanitarian blessings!
To _abolish_ any sort of distress was opposed to its profoundest
interests; its very existence depended on states of distress; it
created states of distress in order to make itself immortal.... The
cancer germ of sin, for instance: the Church was the first to enrich
mankind with this misery!--The "equality of souls before God," this
falsehood, this _pretext_ for the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded,
this anarchist bomb of a concept, which has ultimately become the
revolution, the modern idea, the principle of decay of the whole of
social order,--this is _Christian_ dynamite ... The "humanitarian"
blessings of Christianity! To breed a self-contradiction, an art of
self-profanation, a will to lie at any price, an aversion, a contempt
of all good and honest instincts out of _humanitas!_ Is this what you
call the blessings of Christianity?--Parasitism as the only method of
the Church; sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope of life
out of mankind with anmic and sacred ideals. A "Beyond" as the will to
deny all reality; the cross as the trade-mark of the most subterranean
form of conspiracy that has ever existed,--against health, beauty,
well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul, _against
Life itself...._
This eternal accusation against Christianity I would fain write on all
walls, wherever there are walls,--I have letters with which I can make
even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one
enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge,
for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and
too _petty,_--I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind....
And _time_ is reckoned from the _dies nefastus_ upon which this
fatality came into being--from the first day of Christianity!--_why
not rather from its last day?--From to-day?_--Transvaluation of all
Values!...
[1] The German "_Tchtigkeit_" has a nobler ring than our word
"efficiency."--TR.
[2] _Cf._ Disraeli: "But enlightened Europe is not happy. Its existence
is a fever which it calls progress. Progress to what?" ("Tancred," Book
III., Chap, vii.).--TR.
[3] It will be seen from this that in spite of Nietzsche's ruthless
criticism of the priests, he draws a sharp distinction between
Christianity and the Church. As the latter still contained elements
of order, it was more to his taste than the denial of authority
characteristic of real Christianity.--TR.
[4] "_reine Thorheit_" in the German text, referring once again to
Parsifal.--Tr.
[5] This applies apparently to Bismarck, the forger of the Ems telegram
and a sincere Christian.--Tr.
[6] An adaptation of Shakespeare's "Well roared, lion" (_Mid. N. D.,_
Act 5, Sc. i.), the lion, as is well known, being the symbol for St
Mark in Christian literature and Art--TR.
[7] A parody on a line in Schiller's _"Jungfrau von Orleans"_ (Act 3,
Sc. vi.): "_Mit der Dummheit kmpfen Gtter selbst vergebens._" (With
stupidity even the gods themselves struggle in vain).--TR.
[8] = Lat. Retentio, Inhibitio (Stephanus, Thesaurus Grc
Lingu); therefore: reserve, caution. The Greek Sceptics were also
called Ephectics owing to their caution in judging and in concluding
from facts.--TR.
[9] The following passage from Multatuti will throw light on this
passage:--
"Father:--'Behold, my son, how wisely Providence has arranged
everything! This bird lays its eggs in its nest and the young will be
hatched just about the time when there will be worms and flies with
which to feed them. Then they will sing a song of praise in honour of
the Creator who overwhelms his creatures with blessings.'--
"Son:--'Will the worms join in the song, Dad?'".--TR.
[10] "Thus Spake Zarathustra." The Priests.--TR.
[11] I Corinthians vii. 2, 9.--TR.
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